Poetry School Articles

How to Improve Your Poetry: Poetry as a Revolution of Language
In this series, we interview our tutors about poetry and its place in their world. These interviews will cover creative writing tips, excelling in a poetry workshop, building a literary career, and finding your poetic voice. Here’s Rebecca Levi on poetry as a revolution of language. Rebecca is running The Poetics of Latin American Resistance:…
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Advanced Poetry: Elevate Your Craft
For advanced poets looking to refine their skills and learn from leading guest tutors, our Advanced Poetry Masterclasses offer an unparalleled opportunity to engage with expert voices, explore new poetic territories, and deepen your craft. These workshops will push the boundaries of technique, poetic form, and lyrical expression. Mayonnaise & the Sublime Masterclass – Agnieszka…
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Poetry for Everyone: Your First Steps into Writing
Our Poetry for Everyone workshops are designed for new poets, casual writers, and creative hobbyists who are just starting to explore the world of writing. With a focus on beginner-friendly techniques, you’ll learn the basics of poetic forms, how to experiment with different styles, and how to express your thoughts and feelings through the art…
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Poetry Craft: What is a Golden Shovel?
As part of our Poetry Craft series, Catherine Smith discusses how to write a Golden Shovel poem. Can you explain what a Golden Shovel poem is? The ‘Golden Shovel’ is a poetic form, where the poet chooses a line from an existing poem and uses each word from that line as the last word of…
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Stealing Fire: Learning from Female Poets
Ready to explore the transformative power of female poets? Our Stealing Fire workshops are designed for those inspired by feminist literature and the powerful voices of women in poetry. These workshops will guide you to understand the rich legacy of female voices. A focus on feminist and influential poets. Offering tools to sharpen your own…
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CLIMATE POETRY: Blaise Sales and Jasper Rees, ‘Heat Stressed Moth’
A collaboration between the University of Leeds Poetry Centre and the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures
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Break the Rules: Experimental & Playful Poetry
For young creatives, literary rebels, and experimental poets, these workshops challenge you to push the boundaries of poetry, embrace unconventional techniques, and play with form in exciting new ways. Ideal for experienced poets and alternative thinkers who are ready to break the rules and redefine poetry itself. Poems After Poems: Writing Ars Poetica – Leah…
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CLIMATE POETRY: Simon Armitage, ‘The Summit’
A collaboration between the University of Leeds Poetry Centre and the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures.
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Poetry for Change & Personal Growth: Writing in Crisis & Finding Your Voice
Poetry has the power to heal, resist, and transform. Whether you’re writing to navigate personal challenges, address global crises, or find an expressive outlet, our workshops provide the space, support, and expert guidance to help you craft the best poetic response. Lighting the World: Writing in Times of Crisis – Shazea Quraishi Explore how poetry…
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Freedom in Form: Challenge Your Poetry Boundaries
Are you ready to break free from traditional structures and explore the possibilities of poetry? Our Freedom in Form workshops are designed for poets who want to experiment, challenge conventions, and embrace forms of expression. This is your chance to redefine your creative process and take bold steps in your creative practice. With a focus…
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Unsticking a Stuck Poet: Overcoming Writer’s Block
Feeling stuck? Our Unsticking a Stuck Poet workshops are designed for writers in need of fresh inspiration. These workshops provide practical strategies, prompts, and exercises to help you get back into your writing flow. Whether you’re looking for ways to break through mental barriers or just need a little guidance to get started, these courses…
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Food, Family & Poetry: Writing Memory Through the Senses
Ready to explore the power of memory and sensory writing? Our Food, Family & Poetry workshops are designed for poets looking to connect deeply with history, storytelling and memory, exploring how the senses shape the stories we tell. COURSES: Around the Table: Writing about Food & Family with Romalyn Ante Explore how food and family…
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Poetry as Response: Transreading & Translating
For poets interested in translation, transreading, and poetic response, these workshops explore how poetry can be transformed, adapted, and reimagined across languages and cultures. Learn to engage with poetry in new and dynamic ways, responding to existing works with fresh interpretations. Transitions, Translations, Transformations, Transreading – Carmen Bugan Explore the interplay between reading, translation, and…
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Where to Submit Your Poetry
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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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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