Face to face

This is an Advanced course, suitable for those with a keen interest in poetry. Participants should be experienced poets with a track record of magazine / pamphlet publication and be familiar with the ideas and terminology of metrical poetry. This course will help group members write more taut, more impressive poems and will foster experimentation with new forms and fresh ideas. The course looks at how contemporary, particularly UK and US, poets, have moved metre, musicality, rhyme and non-metrical forms into the new century.

The group will see a mix of discussion of published poems and homework exercises. Participants should be willing to write three or four new poems per term and are encouraged to attend all three terms, though the latter is not necessary and some spaces may be available in terms two and three.

This course is by application only. If you are interested in joining for the Summer 2012 term, please email six poems to administration@poetryschool.com by 26th March 2012.

Term One will focus on metrical poetry. We will explore different reasons for using various metres and look at the fine lines which exist between metre being effective and being constrictive. The main concern will be stylistic and technical features of metrical poetry and not simply an introduction to specific poetic forms. In particular we will look at how contemporary poets have adapted metrical forms to new ends. In four of the ten sessions we will look at class members' new work written in response to the published poems discussed the previous week.

Term Two will look at musicality and rhyme, examining how sounds and rhythm come together to help a poem have more impact on the reader or listener. Participants will be encouraged to make their poetry more musical by moving away from modes of story, statement and conversation. As with Term One, there will be a mixture of discussion and homework exercises.

Term Three will focus on variation and experiment, especially on poetic forms and types which are not driven by metre but by shape and structure (eg list poems, question and answer poems), and at recently invented poetic forms. Participants will be expected to write and share new poems influenced by the forms we look at.