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A place needn’t just be a physical landscape, a city or town or village or beach or lane or moor; it’s often a repository of memories, somewhere we feel compelled to return, either physically or imaginatively. In this course we’ll look at different ways of taking ourselves – and our readers – to locations that haunt, intrigue, delight and disturb us. We’ll look at work by poets who excel in creating a sense of place, including Seamus Heaney, John Siddique, Jackie Wills and Isobel Dixon.

In-depth focus on your poems in progress and the overall direction and development of your work. There won’t be writing exercises, but the sessions will be enlivened by reading published poetry as a stimulus for your writing and discussion. To apply, please send four poems to Mimi at 130c Evering Road, London N16 7BD by 17 August 2012 (and specify if you would prefer the afternoon or evening session). The course takes place over three terms.

In-depth focus on your poems in progress and the overall direction and development of your work. There won’t be writing exercises, but the sessions will be enlivened by reading published poetry as a stimulus for your writing and discussion. To apply, please send four poems to Mimi at 130c Evering Road, London N16 7BD by 17 August 2012 (and specify if you would prefer the afternoon or evening session). The course takes place over three terms.

Take an existing book and adapt it using cut-up, collage and mark-making techniques to create completely new structures and texts. For inspiration, you'll examine a selection of altered books made by artists and writers including Tom Phillips his Humument, and Jonathan Safran Foer; and you'll discuss poetry beyond the text including visual elements, invisible elements and the role of chance in writing. Come prepared to think in three dimensions, and forget all you were ever taught about not scribbling in books. All materials, including books and stationery, will be provided. However, if there is a book you would especially like to work with, bring it along. Likewise your favourite set of pens and pencils - the more the merrier. In association with Free Verse: The Poetry Book Fair.

So much historical and contemporary poetry is satisfied with a medium paced despondency written in a tranquilised state. In this workshop you will look at examples of poetry to consider how joy is arrived at. You'll explore ways to keep the poem rhetorically charged and vivacious in its engagement with structure, attitude and perspective, and then write lively, joyous poetry - exciting happy poetry that praises the world and those we love. Participants should expect to come away with at least two new poems and an invigorated view of the world! In association with Free Verse: The Poetry Book Fair.

Apart from building a ‘set’ for performance, or a body of work for publication, the poet’s work moves forward one poem at a time. But a poem is small lens through which to view one’s own writing development. In a supportive and creative atmosphere, this course will open up new possibilities by experimenting with content, form and voice to help you recognise/celebrate/expand your existing expectations, styles and habits. Through workshop activities we will respond to contemporary poets such as Atwood, Transtromer, Les Murray, Elizabeth Bishop as well as poets such as John Gay, Robbie Burns, Rabindranath Tagore, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson. We will read and write poems-of-witness, poems of the everyday; poetry of the surreal and sensuous. The aim is to generate new poems, whilst broadening your scope as a poet. Join us in ‘Beyond the Poem’ and surprise yourself!

N.B. The venue for this course has changed since the Autumn brochure went to press. Sessions will now take place at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama at The University of Manchester.

This course is designed both for experienced writers looking to widen their repertoire and for beginners looking for a more structured approach to their writing. You will have the opportunity to develop one or more approaches to writing and start to build up a body of creative work. You will consider different ways in which writing can engage with public or private themes and examine the different effects of free and formal verse structures and of working within artificial constraints. Through exercises, reading, writing, group feedback and one-to-one or small group planning sessions, you will be encouraged to construct an independent voice, which is consistent from poem to poem and to develop confidence in shaping your work.

What artefacts or personal traits would we leave behind if we died tomorrow? What landscapes have shaped us? What communities and civilisations do we belong to (bikers, feminists, parents)? What do we think of our own material culture - the objects and buildings around us? This course concentrates on the personal archaeologies that dictate and shape our lives, and allows us to focus on how we can write them.

The Sonnet has proved to be the most popular form of poetry over the last 500 years or so. The twentieth and twenty-fi rst century has seen the form reinvented time and time again in staggering ways which suggests there are no end to the possibilities it has to offer. On this course we will explore the form’s malleability and range. By reading a small amount of the key sonnets of modern and contemporary times, whilst considering the sonnet’s heritage, you will write your own 14 liners. Tasks will be based around sonnets written in the last hundred years or so (with a particular focus on the last fifty years). By the end of the course you will be inventing your own methods and processes and adding to this rich tradition. Students should have 5-10 of their own poems ready to work on which they are prepared to treat and manipulate; these need not be sonnets nor in any way complete.

The Poetry School's new online poetry workshops provide a place for the general improvement of your left-for-dead poems, your work in need of refreshment or brand new pieces. Bring poems of any shape or size for detailed written feedback from Helen once a fortnight and general forum feedback from fellow students.

The Poetry School's new online poetry workshops provide a place for the general improvement of your left-for-dead poems, your work in need of refreshment or brand new pieces. Bring poems of any shape or size for detailed written feedback from Katy once a fortnight and general forum feedback from fellow students.

**Martin Figura was the original tutor for this course; he has now been replaced by Katy Evans-Bush.**

‘Heaney to Homer and Back’ was one of the first courses the Poetry School ran, back in our early days. Revisiting the course’s highlights for new and returning students, each session explores the life and work of one of the following: Heaney, Lorca, Rilke, Cavafy, Yeats, Emily Dickinson, the Kalevala, Early Chinese Lyric poetry, Pushkin and Whitman. Generous handouts will be provided and each week’s combination of tutor input, close reading and lively discussion is designed to provide guidance, stimulus and new ideas for your reading and writing.

Also, click here to see an in depth introduction to the course and more about the poets and poems you'll be studying.

To be a contemporary poet, you should read contemporary poetry, but it’s easy to fall behind when so much is happening and so many new poets are publishing. This course is aimed at well-read advanced students who want to discuss and learn about recent developments in UK and US poetry. The first term will introduce you to a range of UK poets who have emerged in the past decade or so; second term will do the same with US poets; third term will look at a new generation of younger UK/US poets who are revitalising poetry. Class members will be encouraged to write and show
poetry which responds creatively to the poems discussed.

To apply for this course email six poems to programme@poetryschool.com by 24 August 2012

Further details: this is a course for well read, confident students who want to engage with the current poetic climate. Students can apply to join in any term of this three term course.

With reference to Denise Levertov’s essay, Some Notes on Organic Form, during this course we will debate the opportunities and challenges of so-called ‘Free verse’. Whether you are wary of it or whether it has been part of your poetic practice for some time, through close readings of North American poets followed by assignments derived from the poems, the aim will be to foster a deeper understanding of non-traditional form and to increase confidence when we ourselves employ it.

**Helen Farish was the original tutor for this course; she has now been replaced by Tamar Yoseloff.**

From Whitman to Morley, Elson to Greenlaw, poets have long valued the rich and diverse subjects offered by science to help them create original and thought provoking work. Heidi Williamson, previously poet-in-residence at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre, will help you draft new poems inspired by fantastic scientific images and idioms as well as classic poems. A day designed to spark discoveries and breakthroughs of your own.

Families - immediate and distant, present and past - shape us. Poets are often drawn to writing about powerful and complex relationships with their nearest and not so dearest. In this course, we’ll ask our relatives awkward questions, peer into their cupboards and sheds, conjure them for the page. We’ll also look at some of the ways in which contemporary poets, including Susan Wicks, Robin Robertson, Grace Nicholls, Maurice Riordon, Neil Rollinson and Sharon Olds have found engaging ways to write about family.

How does a poem reflect, and reflect on, itself, its world, its maker? We’ll be writing and reading poems connected in one way or another with the notion of ‘reflection’ and may perhaps begin to find an answer to the question.

Tired of these stiff, Old Country ways? Join us for a pan-American road trip as we dip into the Great American Songbook. Running on a bi-weekly basis this course will take the poems of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, Grace Paley, Maya Angelou, Mark Doty and Sharon Olds amongst other American Greats as our roadmap and guide. We’re looking for inspiration, craft and some good old-fashioned rulebreaking, so loosen your stays and let’s hit the road.

A monthly meeting for those who have had some experience in writing poetry or serious fiction, involving exercises and in-depth feedback to develop critical skills. Myra’s particular interests lie in personal writing, an area in which she’s widely published, and also narrative. To apply, email three poems or short prose samples as a word attachment to Myra myrarschneider@gmail.com or post with email address /SAE to the address above by 20 September 2012.

This class will introduce you to seven American poets of the new generation: Timothy Donnelly, Nuar Alsadir, Jason Schneiderman, Katy Lederer, G.C. Waldrep, Dan Beachy-Quick and Sarah Manguso, linking them to writerly ancestors such as Wallace Stevens, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Theodore Roethke, Gertrude Stein, John Donne, Sappho, the New York School, LANGUAGE poetry and Confessionalism. Several of the poets have volunteered a personal statement about their work, predecessors and contemporaries: you’ll examine them to discover a unique insight into the current American poem.

A day for readers and writers of poetry. We start with a 4th-century empress’s beautiful lyrics and centuries of folk poems bristling with myth and history, discover Japanese poetry’s most consummate voices, and open Japan’s miraculous first anthology, the Man’yoshu, one of whose star turns, Princess Nukada, singlehandedly revolutionised the nation’s poetry by her authentic individual voice. Through fifteen hundred prolific years, we explore why Japanese poets prefer autumn, how the haiku was perfected by Basho, and what gave Japan’s poets such power over 20th-century America and the poetry of Pound, Creeley and Amy Lowell.

To coincide with a forthcoming exhibition* of poetic portraits at the Poetry Society's Covent Garden cafe, we are delighted to welcome Greg Delanty to the Poetry School's programme with a workshop to improve the originality of your creative thinking.

First hour: Imagery and the Senses

Artists physicalize the abstract. A regular question people ask is 'how are your spirits?' and people answer without thinking that they feel good or bad or not too bad. But where are their spirits? Has anybody seen, felt, heard, touched, smelled a spirit? We will talk about how the poet physicalizes abstract notions such as the spirit, love, happiness, and sadness via language.

Second Hour: Making it New (or Renewing) and Leaving a Gap

The title of these workshops is Releasing Two Birds (or More) from the One Cage. We as writers show the world in a new way, breaking from cliché. This is not as easy as it may seem. This workshop will examine the devices and ways, such as metaphor and simile, of making it new, of showing the world in a new way. This is probably the most fundamental attribute of an artist. We will also talk about leaving space in the poem, of how what we leave out is as important as what we include.

Third Hour: Sound

We will work on how the sound of words can work with the literal meaning of a poem. How everything in a poem must be working in sync.

Fourth and Fifth Hours: Form

Another aspect of working in sync with the literal meaning of the poem is the form. We will examine a traditional form poem, an open form poem, and a mixture of both and see how each is integral to the literal meaning of that poem.

If we accomplish all this, we will have released at least five birds from the one cage.

*Likenesses: the exhibition

From 19 November to 22 December, the Poetry Café hosts the exhibition, Likenesses – intimate portraits of celebrated poets and writers by acclaimed photographer Judith Aronson, including vivid, insightful portraits of Robert Lowell, Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, Greg Delanty himself and many others at their most relaxed and informal. Look out for a short talk by Judith Aronson followed by a reading from Greg Delanty at the Poetry Café, London, on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday 22 November. Arrive from 6pm.

An extra lesson for students enrolled on Routes into Poetry 2012/13 who would like to keep up the momentum between the end of the Autumn term and the start of the Spring.

This course is appropriate for beginners and those who have written some poetry but who would like to take a more structured approach to their writing. You will examine the basics of rhyme, metre, verse forms, lineation and stanza structure. Through exercises, reading, writing and feedback, you will also begin to construct a voice, to create shapes on the page and develop your first drafts with confidence.

Term One

Week One: Imitations
Presentations - 'Formal Wear: notes on rhyme, meter, stanza and pattern' – George Szirtes

Weeks Two - Four: Rhyme and Rhythm
Poems by Sylvia Plath, George Macbeth, Kay Ryan, Catherine Bowman, Theodore Roethke
Exercise: Rhyming trail poem
Exercise: Ballroom dance poem

Weeks Five - Seven: Sonnets
Introduction to 101 Sonnets – Don Paterson
Poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, CK Williams, Billy Collins
Exercise: Sonnet

Weeks Eight - Ten: Villanelles, Sestinas
Poems by Derek Mahon, Elizabeth Bishop, Michael Donaghy, Dylan Thomas
Exercise: Villanelle / Sestina

Week Ten: Summary

Useful Reading

• The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, eds. (Norton, 2000)
• Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse Mary Oliver (Mariner Books, 1998)
• 101 Sonnets from Shakespeare to Heaney Don Paterson, ed (Faber, 1999)
• The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland, eds (Norton, 2008)

Term Two

Week One: Definitions of Poetry
Basil Bunting’s ‘Advice to Poets’
‘The Plain Sense of Things’ – Wallace Stevens
Exercise One: A Desolate Landscape

Week Two: Presentations

Week Three: Thoughts on Process
Essays by Eavan Boland, Mark Doty, Tamar Yoseloff
Exercise Two: The Immediacy of Condition

Week Four: Presentations

Weeks Five and Six: Lineation and Stanzaic Structure
Poems by Seamus Heaney, Sharon Olds, John Burnside, Jorie Graham
Exercise Three: Lineation experiments

Week Seven: Line versus Sentence
Poems by Raymond Carver and Alice Oswald
Exercise Four: Poem for Workshop Sessions

Weeks Eight, Nine and Ten: Workshopping

Week Ten: Summary
Exercise Five: Imitation

Useful Reading:

• Emergency Kit, Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney, eds. (Faber 2004)
• A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver (Harcourt Brace, 1994)
• Writing Poetry, W.N. Herbert (Routledge, 2010)

This course is suitable for beginners. The exact poems under discussion might change. It's best to start in the Autumn term, as the course is cumulative, but it's possible to join in Spring as long as students are not absolute beginners. No new students in the Summer term, as during this term, students work on their own writing portfolios.

Three days to explore the magical Power of Three in poetry. As well as experimenting with rhyme, rhythm and form, we will also look at how we might write about the triangles in our own lives – the bases we return to, our hearts' desires. These sessions are suitable for enthusiastic beginners and more experienced poets keen to try something new and refine their technical awareness. (Please note that the course description and the dates for the sessions in the printed Autumn printed brochure have been updated - these are the correct details.)

Three days of friendly, intensive writing and critiquing to help you produce a bundle of new poems, and write to the very top of your ability. Refresh your poetic senses by looking at newly published poetry; develop your own work with quick-fire exercises on a range of topics and forms; start new poems and critique them in a welcoming group. We’ll also look at a range of current journals and blogs where you might publish your work. Suitable for all levels of committed writer.

Your poems are at the heart of these sessions: in-depth feedback from tutor and students on your poetry in progress. Bring 16 copies of one of your draft poems to the first session. Suitable for everyone looking to grow and develop as writers.

Seminars meet monthly for in-depth discussions or poems in progress, with a tutor on hand to offer additional advice, guidance and feedback. Groups contain between six and eight students.

A successful seminar group enables supportive critical friendships to develop, so you are encouraged to commit to all eight sessions. As far as we can, we arrange seminars according to levels of interest and experience.

Seminars meet monthly for in-depth discussions or poems in progress, with a tutor on hand to offer additional advice, guidance and feedback. Groups contain between six and eight students.

Seminars meet monthly for in-depth discussions or poems in progress, with a tutor on hand to offer additional advice, guidance and feedback. Groups contain between six and eight students.

Seminars meet monthly for in-depth discussions or poems in progress, with a tutor on hand to offer additional advice, guidance and feedback. Groups contain between six and eight students.

A successful seminar group enables supportive critical friendships to develop, so you are encouraged to commit to all eight sessions. As far as we can, we arrange seminars according to levels of interest and experience.

Seminars meet monthly for in-depth discussions or poems in progress, with a tutor on hand to offer additional advice, guidance and feedback. Groups contain between six and eight students.

A successful seminar group enables supportive critical friendships to develop, so you are encouraged to commit to all eight sessions. As far as we can, we arrange seminars according to levels of interest and experience.

Seminars meet monthly for in-depth discussions or poems in progress, with a tutor on hand to offer additional advice, guidance and feedback. Groups contain between six and eight students.

Seminars meet monthly for in-depth discussions or poems in progress, with a tutor on hand to offer additional advice, guidance and feedback. Groups contain between six and eight students.

Seminars meet monthly for in-depth discussions or poems in progress, with a tutor on hand to offer additional advice, guidance and feedback. Groups contain between six and eight students.

A successful seminar group enables supportive critical friendships to develop, so you are encouraged to commit to all eight sessions. As far as we can, we arrange seminars according to levels of interest and experience.