Summer Programme Articles
How to Improve Your Poetry: Writing about Good Things: Delight, Joy, Happiness
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 Ellene Glenn Moore on writing about delight, joy and happiness. Why is there so much poetry about misery…
Ellene Glenn Moore
How to: Write a Sonnet
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 James Davies on how to write a sonnet. To write a sonnet, start with a clear theme or…
James Davies
How Cinema Can Improve Your Writing
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 Simon Barraclough on how cinema can inspire and improve your writing. Simon will be teaching Jaws at 50…
Simon Barraclough
How to Improve Your Poetry: Writer’s Block
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 Yanita Georgieva on how to deal with writer’s block. For any writer, there are two terrible states of…
Yanita Georgieva
Sensorial Poetry: Exploring Voice, Performance & the Body
Ready to take your poetry off the page and onto the stage? Our Sensorial Poetry workshops are designed for performance poets, spoken word artists, and experimental writers who want to explore the physical and vocal aspects of poetry. These courses are perfect for those seeking to connect deeply with their audience through the power of…
Poetry School
How to Write Poetry: Can Poetry Help Us Explore Queerness?
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 Kat Dixon on how poetry can help us explore queerness. Kat will be running her course Queer Objects:…
Kat Dixon
Master Your Poetry: Advanced Writing Workshops
Ready to take your poetry to the next level? Our Master Your Poetry workshops are designed for experienced poets who are looking to refine their craft and push the boundaries of their writing. With a focus on advanced skills and personalised feedback, these workshops provide a unique opportunity to work closely with experienced instructors who…
Poetry School
Poetry in Motion: Writing with Playfulness & Flexibility
For poets who love to experiment with form, play with poetic structures, and push creative boundaries, our Poetry in Motion courses will introduce you to new methods, experimental techniques, and fresh approaches to modern poetry. These workshops are perfect for poets who want to embrace flexibility, challenge traditional forms, and have fun with their writing. …
Poetry School
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:…
Rebecca Levi
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…
Poetry School
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…
Poetry School
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…
Catherine Smith
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…
Poetry School
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…
Poetry School
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…
Poetry School
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…
Poetry School
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…
Poetry School
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…
Poetry School
Summer 2025 – Quick Course Guide
Poetry School Quick Course Guide for Summer 2025 Term
Sim Pereira-Madder
‘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
‘He Do The Police In Different Voices’ by Stephen Komarnyckyj: a blog on Alternative Histories
Stephen Komarnyckyj explains how his new course: Writing Alternative Poetic Histories will help you write poetry that faces up to this difficult moment in history I began to think about the role of poetry during what might be a global war during a Skype call with my cousin in 2022. He was in his cellar…
Steve Komarnyckyj
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
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