Start to Write Poetry
Kickstart your writing life with a specially designed day of learning and writing from the home of British poetry.
Level
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Location
Length
Always wanted to write poetry? Start now
Get instant feedback on your poems, learn how to find inspiration all around you, and explore how to start reading – and thinking – like a poet in this one-day introduction to writing poems.
Answer for yourself a deceptively simple question – what is a poem? What makes an effective image? How do you know when a poem is 'finished'? Join acclaimed poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley to find out.
Start to Write Poetry is the perfect introduction to writing poetry, and an excellent primer for our longer poetry courses, too.
Schedule
The course will take place on Zoom, using a mix of teaching and discussion time with practical exercises to get you writing.
10.00–13.00
Finding our Why?
Of all the art forms available, why poetry?
As a way of beginning we’ll open the workshop by exploring the roots of our impulses through playfully guided writing exercises, to help clarify what drives our poems and shapes our individual poetics. We’ll read and discuss poems by poets like Layli Long Soldier, Aracelis Girmay, Sharon Olds and Momtaza Mehri. There will be a moment to share and ask questions about your own writing.
13.00–14.00
Break
14.00–16.00
Building the poem
What makes a poem, and how does its architecture work? How do we know where to start? Or where to finish? Or when to stop and come back later? Where might we break a line, use a comma, or forego punctuation altogether? In this part of the workshop we’ll dive deep into the nuts and bolts of how poems work. In addition to reading poems, we’ll also see what other writers have to say about them, reading the work of Kevin Quashie and Jeffrey Wainwright among others. There will again be time to ask questions about your own writing and writing practice.
Victoria Adukwei Bulley
Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer, and artist. Her work has appeared widely in publications including The White Review...
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