new courses Articles
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
MA in Writing Poetry
Are you determined to take your poetry to the next level?Apply now for the MA in Writing Poetry The MA in Writing Poetry is an accredited degree with Newcastle University and the Poetry School, delivered as part-time course over two years. The course is taught in-person at Somerset House, Strand, London by established poets through workshopping, masterclasses and 1-2-1 tutorials. To see some of the fantastic…
Tessa Foley
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
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:…
Poetry School
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…
Poetry School
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…
Poetry School
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…
Holly Hopkins
Stanzas for Ukraine – 6
The Kalyna[1] Poetry Flute (Especially for Kalyna Language Press Limited[2]) by Myroslav Herasymovych, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj I looked at the news and thought. What did I think? – It’s unknown. Ah! I’ve remembered. – What? – What I thought about. – What did you think about? Without answering I turned my…
Myroslav Herasymovych
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…
Poetry School Stanzas for Ukraine – 5
On The Impossibility of Not Writing by Vitalij Kvitka, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj Poetry is an infinity. War tries to deny this infinity. There are, in this sense, no greater enemies than poetry and war. The poet, after all, is trying to embody the idea of human eternity, as if the infinity…
Vitalij Kvitka Stanzas for Ukraine – 4
Stanzas for Ukraine – The Invasion of the Ukrainian Language [ Author: Lyuba Yakimchuk, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj] The war calls into question everything on which our survival depends and provokes a crisis in our vision of humanity. During Russia’s large scale war against Ukraine only the apathetic wouldn’t quote Theodor AThe…
Lyuba Yakimchuk Stanzas for Ukraine – 3
Our third blog in the Stanzas for Ukraine project is by the Ukrainian writer Oleh Shynkarenko, who is known for his experimental fiction. However, Russia’s invasion of his homeland spurred him to write poetry. His blog talks of the threat to individual identity under occupation and these previously unpublished poems deal with the war in…
Oleh Shynkarenko Stanzas for Ukraine – 2
Our second blog in the Stanzas for Ukraine project is written by the Crimean-Ukrainian poet Vyacheslav Huk, who now lives in Kyiv. He spent most of his childhood hidden from the Soviet authorities on his grandmother’s farm after reading a protest poem in class. In this week’s piece, he explains why this makes Putin’s attempt…
Vyacheslav Huk Stanzas for Ukraine (First Post)
Poetry School is proud to have partnered with tutors Steve Komarnyckyj and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese, and PEN International’s Judyth Hill to publish Stanzas for Ukraine. Every fortnight we will publish a blog written by some of the most significant contemporary Ukrainian poets, who will reflect upon the more than 300 years of historical conflict their country has…
Steve Komarnyckyj
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)….
Becky Varley-Winter
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,…
Claire Collison
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,…
Enaiê Mairê Azambuja
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…
Poetry SchoolSounds 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,…
Meryl Pugh‘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…
Miriam NashMondo: 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…
sjfowlerPoetry and Comics
Poetry and Comics don’t need each other to communicate, and yet Poetry Comics have been around for a while. The New York School Poets, Joe Brainard in particular, created comics which used poetic text, and the idea seems to have grown from there. In the eighties an American writer and educator called Dave Morice published…
Chrissy Williams
Saturday Sessions: an Interview with Ros Barber
An Interview with Ros Barber
We caught up with poet and novelist Ros Barber ahead of her next term of Saturday Sessions: a monthly workshop course of feedback, discussion and writing for poets… Hi Ros! Your new book, Devotion, has just been published – could you tell us more about that? It’s a novel, following up on the success of my…
Poetry School