Courses Articles

September Sale!

We’re offering 50% off selected courses in the Poetry School September Sale. To celebrate the start of the new academic year, we’re offering a 50% discount on some of our fantastic Autumn Term courses. Just use the coupon code AUTUMN50 to access this limited-time offer. Check out the full list of discounted courses below. We…

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Autumn 2023 – Quick Course Guide

Our Autumn Term is now live and we’ve got a whole host of brilliant tutors and courses lined up, so be sure to book promptly to avoid disappointment. Below is our handy Quick Course Guide, where you’ll find everything you’ll need to know. Online Courses INTERACTIVE Our classic 10-week online courses with Live Chats. The…

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Writing My Sister

My sister died suddenly on 5 April. This blog was going to be about the ways I get myself writing. The analogies I find helpful. Tech, for example: harder to reboot, better to keep it going all the time, in any way you can. Remind yourself you are writing a lot of the time. Remind…

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More love poems? Really?

‘Love’ must be one of the most overused words in the English language. So much ‘love poetry’ has been written over the course of human experience, that it might be reasonable to ask – why bother adding to the literature of love poetry? Is there anything more to say? I think there’s lots more to…

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Fortnightly Feedback with Leah Umansky

It’s always a good idea to get another set of eyes on something.  Sometimes, we need new ways to look at the world. The ordinary is often extraordinary; the extraordinary is sometimes ordinary. This is nothing new.  The same is true for the world of a poem and a poem is really just its own…

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Summer 2023 – Quick Course Guide

Our Summer Term is now live and we’ve got a whole host of brilliant tutors and courses lined up, so be sure to book promptly to avoid disappointment. Below is our handy Quick Course Guide, where you’ll find everything you’ll need to know. Online Courses INTERACTIVEOur classic ten-week online courses with Live Chats. Verse Epic:…

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January Sale!

We’re offering 30% off some of our fantastic Spring Term courses. To brighten the beginning of 2023, we’re offering a 30% discount on selected Spring Term courses. Just use the coupon code JANSALE to access this limited-time offer.  Check out the full list of discounted courses below; we can’t wait to begin writing with you this…

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Spring 2023 – Quick Course Guide

Our Spring Term is now live and we’ve got a whole host of brilliant tutors and courses lined up, so be sure to book promptly to avoid disappointment. Below is our handy Quick Course Guide, where you’ll find everything you’ll need to know. Online Courses INTERACTIVEOur classic ten-week online courses with Live Chats. ‘Blank Page…

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INSPIRATION TO INVOICING

A CPD series for professional & aspiring poets Becoming a freelance poet – whether full- or part-time, alongside employed work – requires a range of business and practical skills, not to mention the actual practice of writing and publishing. These sessions aim to creatively and reflectively unpack these skills, inviting participants to consider their own…

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Stanzas for Ukraine – 7

The Poet’s Nose by Serhii Rybnytskyi, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj With what part of the body can I reflect on matters as a poet? My nose, which for me it is practically an ‘Achilles Heel’. Any blow can knock me down, the slightest cold or drop in blood pressure clogs my nostrils….

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Poet as Archaeologist Studio Blog

This autumn, I’m thinking about what poets can learn from archaeologists and their discoveries. Poet as Archaeologist Studio will be a chance to generate new work, read and discuss poems and get feedback on your drafts. It will also be an opportunity to consider how a different discipline might inform our writing. I spent my…

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Autumn 2022 – Quick Course Guide

Our Autumn Term is now live and we’ve got a whole host of brilliant tutors and courses lined up, so be sure to book promptly to avoid disappointment. Below is our handy Quick Guide, where you’ll find everything you’ll need to know about our upcoming courses. Online INTERACTIVE COURSES:Our classic ten-week online courses with Live…

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Snapshot on: Becky Varley-Winter’s Live Wires: Starting to Write

Our Beginner’s course ‘Live Wires: Starting to Write’ with Becky Varley-Winter recently completed another term and Becky has put together a zine to showcase the students’ best work, which you can see extracts of below. The next iteration of this course will take place in our Summer 2022 Term (running 12 May – 14 July)….

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Taking the Piss Flower: on the pitfalls of writing poems inspired by art, and bringing something new to the party

Ekphrasis is one of those poemy words poets assume everyone knows, like villanelle, and pantoum; but my Mac doesn’t recognise it, flags it up, and takes me to Wiki – ‘an ekphrastic poem is a poem inspired or stimulated by a work of art’. I remember feeling so happy when I first discovered the word,…

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The Zen of Ecopoetics: the contribution of Zen to modernist American poetry

In Breathing: Chaos and Poetry, the Italian philosopher Franco Berardi suggests that poetry is the excess of semiotic exchange that goes beyond the limits of language and, by extension, transcends the limits of reality as we know it. In this sense, poetry offers us a way of rethinking our relationship with non-human beings and environments,…

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Spring 2022 – Quick Course Guide

Our Spring Term is now live and we’ve got a whole host of brilliant tutors and courses lined up, so be sure to book promptly to avoid disappointment. Below is our handy Quick Guide, where you’ll find everything you’ll need to know about our upcoming courses. Online INTERACTIVE COURSES:Our classic ten-week online courses with Live…

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Sounds and Sweet Airs

Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises… I’m writing this in the back room of our house, overlooking a meeting of gardens. We’re underneath a flight path, and this morning the planes are roaring in, low, carrying the summer visitors and returners to London. In between, a robin’s ticking of alarm reaches me,…

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‘The Poetry Postbox’

When I feel stuck, exhausted, fog-brained, knotted up, or like I’ll never write another poem again, I sit down and write a letter. Not as an exercise— a real letter to someone, that will be posted. I write the letter by hand, and often look around to see if I can find anything to make…

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Mondo: The Global Avant Garde

I’ve run three courses for the Poetry School so far, all of which have been about avant-garde poetry. Covering specific movements in European, British and World avant-garde writing, I’ve been able to communicate things I’m passionate about to successively erudite and enthusiastic course participants. Here’s what’s coming up for the Autumn Term… Mondo: The Global…

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Devouring and Creation: the Poetry of Food and that which Feeds our Poetry

In both his letters and his poetry, John Keats implored artists to “live unpoetically” by focusing on an “acuteness of vision”. This means listening, watching, touching and tasting what is going on around us every day. We do not isolate special occasions in order to squeeze out a poem, we are moved by something that…

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Poetry Studio: an Interview with Fiona Hamilton

An Interview with Fiona Hamilton

We caught up with poet and tutor Fiona Hamilton to find out more about her new course in Bristol, Poetry Studio, starting 16 September… Hi Fiona! What poetry are you reading at the moment? Today I read poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (‘Don’t Let That Horse’), Wendy Cope (‘The Uncertainty of the Poet’) and R.S. Thomas…

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Creatrix: an Interview with Claire Askew

An Interview with Claire Askew

Expectations, categorisations and loaded words: we caught up with poet and tutor Claire Askew to find out more about her Autumn Term course, ‘Creatrix: Women’s Poetries for the 21st Century’: Hi Clare! How’s your summer shaping up? Claire: Great, thanks! I’m just back from a holiday/research trip to Cornwall: I’m doing research into English witchcraft for…

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Mixed Borders: Who’s Where

Open Gardens Squares Weekend is just around the corner! On Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 June, you can explore over 200 private, secret and tucked away gardens across London. Our Mixed Borders Poets have taken up residence in 16 of the Open Gardens dotted across London. They’ve been visiting their gardens for the last month…

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Love, Death, Art, Time and Nature: an interview with Sarah Corbett

An Interview with Sarah Corbett

Tell us more about your new course, ‘Love, Death, Time, Art and Nature…‘. What brought you to the subject? Sarah: I was asked to do five sessions that would appeal to students at various stages in their development, so my idea was to take five ‘themes’, and to treat each session as a unit in…

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A budding ‘pomance’: an interview with Jacqueline Saphra

An Interview with Jacqueline Saphra

Jacqueline Saphra, one of The Poetry School’s new tutors, talks to us about her new course, ‘Training the Poem’ and takes us through some of her work and methods.

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