Courses Articles
Poetry Craft: My Favourite Poetic Device with Simon Barraclough
Simon Barraclough discusses his favourite poetic device.
Simon Barraclough
How to: Offer Feedback
Expert Poetry Tutor Elizabeth Parker’s guide on how to offer feedback.
Elizabeth Parker
Poetry Queries: Can Poetry Be Taught? with Sascha Akhtar
In this series, we interview our tutors about poetry queries. Here’s Sascha Akhtar discussing the idea of whether poetry can be taught.
Sascha Akhtar
Spring 2025 – Quick Course Guide
Poetry School Quick Course Guide Spring 2025
Poetry School
Poetry Craft: My Favourite Poetic Device with Eve Grubin
Eve Grubin discusses her favourite poetic device.
Eve Grubin
How to: Taking Criticism Well
Expert Poetry Tutor Natalie Whittaker’s guide on receiving criticism constructively!
Natalie Whittaker
‘Whose Story is it Anyway?’ Exploring Unreliable Narration with Elspeth Wilson
Expert Poetry Tutor Elspeth Wilson discusses narration and masking in your poetry
Elspeth Wilson
‘Street Sauntering’ by Suzannah V. Evans — a blog on Flâneur-ing About: The Poetry of Streets
Suzannah V. Evans explains how her new course: ‘Flâneur-ing About: The Poetry of Streets‘ will help you write poetry as you meander through cities. I have an urge to begin this blog mid-sentence, perhaps with the word ‘So’ or ‘Alors’, its French equivalent, because then I could imagine the sentence appearing suddenly out from behind…
SuzannahVE
‘Tender Towards Innocence’ by Carmen Bugan: a blog on Innocence in a Troubled World
Carmen Bugan explains how her new course: ‘A Quest for Innocence in a Troubled World‘ will help you write poetry that faces up to this worrisome time. I borrowed the title of this piece from Seamus Heaney, who has said about Czeslaw Milosz: Tender towards innocence, tough-minded when faced with brutality and injustice, Milosz could…
Carmen Bugan
What Is Revolutionary Poetics? by Mischa Foster Poole
Here is Mischa Foster Poole talking about his course Revolutionary Poetics: Writing Against the Grain; Alternate art; busting open the poem to embrace new and experimental forms. (5) This is because the tools that we have to hand are provided by the hegemonic ideology, the mode of production that seeks to ideologically reproduce itself through the…
Mischa Foster Poole
What Is Poetic Theft? with Louis Glazzard
Here is Louis Glazzard talking about his course Poetic Theft: From Inspiration to Transformation; A transformative workshop series about harnessing your inspirations to expand your writing. In Pursuit of Originality… Everything I’ve ever created has been inspired by something. Well, almost everything. When I first started writing I was obsessed with being original. In fact,…
Louis Glazzard
Wallpaper: Poems & Houses with Laura Scott
Here’s Laura Scott on her upcoming course, Poems & Houses; House & home; poetics of our storied buildings. My house and the ghost of a doorway In my house there’s the ghost of a doorway. I can’t remember when I first noticed it, but I do remember the gentle shock of running my hand over…
Laura Scott
Science & Poetry: The Laboratory of Verse! with Mario Petrucci
Here’s Mario Petrucci on his upcoming course, Science & Poetry: The Laboratory of Verse; Fissile material; experiment with scientific stanzas and supercharge your poetic skills. Science as a metaphor As someone versed in quantum physics, I’m fascinated by metaphor, the way everything (as in the quantum world) can become everything else. That’s the engine-room of my…
Mario Petrucci
Dear Rwanda: Creating a Poetry Souvenir
Here’s Isy Mead on her upcoming course, Poetry Souvenirs, keepsakes from over there; capturing the foreign without the fake. Rwanda, or ‘The Land of a Thousand Hills’, has a beauty beyond imagining. It is characterised by ubiquitous hillside terraces and spreading banana groves, by stunning, bright-green tea-fields to the south, and green and gold safari…
Isabella Mead
Wilder Swimming – Blog by Penny Boxall on ‘Tales from the Wetlands’
A blog by Penny Boxall on her upcoming course ‘Tales from the Wetlands Studio’ The first time I went to Estonia, I was surprised at the extent to which tales and folklore are woven into the landscape there. Friends told me you must not sit on the sandy beach until the first thunderstorm of the…
Penny Boxall
The Freedom of Writing
Michal Kamil Piotrowski on his course: ‘A Kaleidoscope of Forms: Innovative Poetry in the 21st Century’ Hello! In this post I will write a bit about experimental poetry. But first – what makes poetry experimental or innovative? In my opinion, the most important aspect is that, unlike traditional poetry, it concentrates on the future, it…
Michał Kamil Piotrowski
Rebecca Levi on ‘The stars of Chile for you (Las estrellas de Chile para ti)’: Transreading 5 Chilean Women Poets
Here’s Rebecca Levi on her upcoming course, ‘The stars of Chile for you (Las estrellas de Chile para ti)’: Transreading 5 Chilean Women Poets‘ December, 2018. Santiago, Chile. My friend’s kitchen. It was an old house with an inner courtyard, home to three, sometimes five women, plus a cat (female, obviously). A soft house, as if…
Rebecca Levi
Blog on our Climate Crisis Poetry Course ‘Burning Gaze: Revisiting the Romantics During Global Heating.’
Here’s Glyn Edwards on his upcoming course, Burning Gaze: Revisiting the Romantics During Global Heating, exploring romanticism and climate crisis poetry. ‘Nearly Daffodils’: BBC6, English Teacher(s), Wordsworth, and Adrian Henri BBC 6 Music has three playlists; the selection of songs appear on rotation through the day. Sometimes, a song that received intermittent radio play months…
Glyn Edwards
Now I Have a Poem, HO-HO-HO
Chrissy Williams on her forthcoming festive one-day poetry workshop, ‘Yippee-Ki-Yay: Writing Poems Inspired by DIE HARD’. Ah, Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year, a time for sharing warm fires, hastily wrapped gifts, and generational discord. Like many, I gravitate towards Die Hard at Christmas: a film about family and violent resolution with all…
Poetry School
Spring 2024 – Quick Course Guide
Our Spring Term is now live and we’ve got a whole host of brilliant tutors and poetry 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 poetry courses with Live…
Poetry School
‘What are we supposed to use, harsh language?’
Chrissy Williams on using the movie ALIENS to create her one-day poetry workshop, Short Controlled Bursts. When poets, myself included, turn to cinema for inspiration, it’s often to complex films with a philosophical bent which are crafted with deliberately poetic tools; not machine guns, armored cars, and aliens who burst through the chests of their…
Chrissy Williams
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…
Poetry School
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…
Elizabeth Parker
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…
Catherine Smith
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…
Leah Umansky