Poetry School Articles

An image with the text: 'Poetry School Spring 2025' overlaid for the Quick Course Guide.

Spring 2025 – Quick Course Guide

Poetry School Quick Course Guide Spring 2025

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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,…

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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…

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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…

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Review Essay – Half Other by Peter Wallis

Nicola Healey reads the new poetry collection by Peter Wallis: Half Other, ‘a reminder of the significance of lateral relations in our lives’ whole’. ‘I was not born alone’: Twinhood and Illness Peter Wallis’s first full collection, Half Other, takes inspiration from his life as a twin, focusing on the lengthy ill health and hospital…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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Identity Poetics: A Century of Englishness

Christopher Madden reads the latest anthology edited by John Greening and Kevin Gardner, and the new poetry collection by Aaron Kent. Contraflow: Lines of Englishness 1922-2022, Ed. John Greening & Kevin Gardner Every anthology poses two fundamental questions: ‘Why this?’, and ‘Why now?’ For John Greening and Kevin Gardner, the editors of Contraflow: Lines of…

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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…

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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…

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Poetry School x TLC Free Reads Scheme 2023-24

Looking to develop your writing under the guidance of a published poet? Poetry School is delighted to be partnering with The Literary Consultancy in offering 1 poet a free Mentoring place from February 2024. Find out how to apply below!  This year, we’re excited to be joining the TLC Arts Council England Free Reads Scheme,…

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Where to Submit Your Poetry in 2024

You’ve just completed a Poetry School course and have written and edited a few new poems, so what now? Here are some places to publish and submit your poetry. Submitting your poems to a magazine, journal, or press is the first step to sharing your work with an audience and building up a readership, which…

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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…

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Review: Standing in the Forest of Being Alive by Katie Farris

Stephanie Sy-Quia reads the new poetry collection by Katie Farris and discovers a message of hope and perseverance. Katie Farris’s second collection revolves around treatment for breast cancer, with the mastectomy as the great before and after – a dividing line along which most of the collection falls. Other moments of magnitude are the Capitol…

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‘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…

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Momtaza Mehri – How I Did It ‘A Few Facts We Hesitantly Know to Be Somewhat True’

Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2023 ‘How I Did It’ series. This year we asked the poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection to write about the inspiration behind their collection. Here’s Momtaza Mehri on what inspired her to write Bad Diaspora Poems. This was one of a series of poems I…

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HOW I DID IT – Zena Edwards ‘HUMAN: THIS EMBODIED KNOWLEDGE’

Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2023 ‘How I Did It’ series. This year we asked the poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (Performed) to write about the inspiration behind their poem. Here’s Zena Edwards on what inspired her to write ‘Human : This Embodied Knowledge’. This piece has always wanted to…

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Eric Yip – How I Did It ‘Fricatives’

Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2023 ‘How I Did It’ series. This year we asked the poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (Written) to write about the inspiration behind their poem. Here’s Eric Yip on what inspired him to write ‘Frictatives.’ Thinking about a poem after having written it feels like…

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Kandace Siobhan Walker – How I Did It ‘Cowboy’

Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2023 ‘How I Did It’ series. This year we asked the poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection to write about the inspiration behind the poems in their collection. Here’s Kandace Siobhan Walker on what inspired her to write Cowboy. When I was editing Cowboy, I was…

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Kathryn Bevis – How I Did It ‘My body tells me that she’s filing for divorce’

Welcome to our Forward Prizes 2023 ‘How I Did It’ series. This year we asked the poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (Written) to write about the inspiration behind their chosen poem. Here’s Kathryn Bevis on what inspired her to write ‘My body tells me that she’s filing for divorce.’ On…

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Review Round-up: The Body of Language

Shalini Sengupta reads three new poetry collections by Alycia Pirmohamed, Jay Gao, and Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa. On Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed 1. How do the words get to the page? 2. What attracts them? 3. What did you burn? 4. What did you give to the river? These lines from Bhanu…

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Stanzas for Ukraine – 25

The Heat by Fedir Mlynchenko, translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj My flight from the war, launched by Moscow against Ukraine, is similar to the stories of millions of other forced exiles. It’s still too painful to even think about and especially to share my recollections.Despite having traversed thousands of kilometres, I still couldn’t…

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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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A Story That Will Never End; An Obituary, for Victoria Amelina

The Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina died at the weekend from injuries she sustained following a Russian missile attack on the pizzeria where she was dining on 27 June 2023. Her death, which was announced on 3 July 2023, brings the total number of casualties from the strike to 13, including four children. Victoria, who was…

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