The Salon: Developing Your Poems The Salon: Developing Your Poems The Salon: Developing Your Poems

The Salon: Developing Your Poems

Join Richard Scott and Julia Copus for this twelve-week intermediate course – find new paths for your work, broaden your understanding of the craft and meet a group of supportive, like-minded poets.

Level

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Improving

What do these levels mean?

Location

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Online

Length

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12 weeks
  • Start Date
  • Time
  • Mondays, 19.00–21.00

Last few places available

£695

£695

£200 / month for 2 months and a £295.00 deposit

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Deepen your knowledge and create new work

At the heart of this lively and energetic course is the writing and sharing of new work. In weekly two-hour sessions, you’ll be creatively challenged to break free of your comfort zones.

You will be writing new poems each week with the expectation that you will broaden your techniques and intensify your poetic ambitions. Through the close reading and discussion of key texts, you’ll also be pushed towards a more rewarding way of reading and engaging with classic modern poetry.

Is this the right course for me?

This is an intermediate poetry course, which will work best for students who have already begun writing poetry, or who work professionally in another writing field and are looking to turn their hand to poetry.

The Faber Academy Scholarship Programme

There are scholarship places available on this course for writers who otherwise could not afford to attend. We particularly welcome applications from writers of colour, disabled writers and LGBTQ+ writers.

 

To apply, please submit three poems, along with your covering letter (both as Word docs or PDFs) to academy@faber.co.uk, with the subject line ‘Scholarship Application: The Salon – April 2025’. The full terms and conditions and more information about our scholarship programme can be found below.

 

The deadline for applications is 14 April 2025 at 23:59.

 

The course will consist of ten two-hour classes, held via Zoom and supported on Faber Academy's bespoke Online Classroom. Each class will include fifteen minutes of guided writing time with prompts, or alternatively, a take-home writing exercise.
During workshop sessions, you'll be discussing poetry, unearthing craft and technique relevant to your writing practice and learning what makes a poem work.

As part of the course, you’ll also receive two thirty-minute tutorials, and two set texts will be discussed during classes, with guest sessions led by both of the authors.

There'll also be time for a couple of student-led discussions and several self-guided writing exercises and a celebratory class poetry reading.

Beyond amazing. The quality of the teaching was outstanding.

Student

It was just brilliant. […] I finished the course feeling very, very excited to begin finding my way in the world of poetry.

Student

Interesting, diverse, authoritative and thought provoking.

Student

I found it truly inspiring. It was varied and [the] tutors provided useful balance and contrast. I felt lucky to be a part of it.

Student

It was not just about poetry. It was about everything! Art, life, living, truth.

Student

Beyond amazing. The quality of the teaching was outstanding.

    The course will take place on Zoom on Monday evenings, 7–9 p.m.

Course Programme

Session 1

Monday 28 April, 19.00–21.00

Language with Richard...

Session 2

5 May, 19.00–21.00

Walking the Line with Julia...

Session 3

12 May, 19.00–21.00

Drafting and Editing with Richard...

See remaining sessions

Course Programme

The Salon: Developing Your Poems

Session 1

Monday 28 April, 19.00–21.00

Language with Richard

An introduction to the course with Richard followed by ideas on language, and The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poets, and how to experiment with, and even supercharge, your own natural poetic language!

Session 2

5 May, 19.00–21.00

Walking the Line with Julia

What effects can be created by the turning of a line? What difference does line length make to a poem’s mood? And which parts of a line carry the greatest impact? We look at how poets C. K. Williams, Gwendolyn Brooks and Colette Bryce make use of line – and stanza – patterns, and how we might apply some of the techniques in their work to add anticipation, energy and momentum to our own.

Session 3

12 May, 19.00–21.00

Drafting and Editing with Richard

Is a poem ever finished? And how do we know when it's ready? By examining the drafts of various poems by Ada Limón, and one of Richard's own, this session will explore the editing process and tap into the possibilities hidden within your work.

Session 4

19 May, 19.00–21.00

Telling it Slant with Julia

Emily Dickinson’s directive to ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant’ is invaluable advice for a poet. ‘The truth must dazzle gradually,’ she goes on: in other words, the mind is better able to absorb the glare of truth obliquely. We’ll look at T.S. Eliot’s notion of the objective correlative and at how poets make use of physical objects to reveal the emotional heart of a poem – slantwise.

Session 5

26 May, 19.00–21.00

Tutorials with Julia & Richard

Join Julia and Richard for the first evening of one-to-one tutorials where you'll receive feedback on your own work. You'll also be together as a class discussing the set texts and there'll be a writing exercise too for you to complete!

Session 6

2 June, 19.00–21.00

Guest Session with Maurice Riordan

An evening with the author of your first set text, Shoulder Tap! Throughout the course you will have been reading their work – and we will have been examining it together in class. Now you will have an opportunity to hear them read and even ask them your own questions.

Session 7

9 June, 19.00–21.00

Revealing the Invisible with Julia

The harder we look, the less familiar the object of our gaze turns out to be. The Martian School of poetry (of the late 1970s and early 1980s) took this idea to the extreme, scrutinising the commonplace to make it new. In this session, we’ll look at a number of techniques that might be used to disrupt our regular writing habits, surprise the reader and uncover the strangeness of our own everyday lives.

Session 8

16 June, 19.00–21.00

Writing Risk with Richard

Exploring risk and urgency in poetry, this session will examine how to expand the lyric space with ideas and language that dare to speak what might go unsaid or is considered uncomfortable.

Session 9

23 June, 19.00–21.00

Tutorials with Julia & Richard

Join Julia and Richard for the second evening of one-to-one tutorials where you'll receive feedback on your own work. You'll also be together as a class discussing the set texts and there'll be a writing exercise too for you to complete!

Session 10

30 June, 19.00–21.00

The Eternal Now with Julia

Can poetry stop time? The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos (from which we get ‘chronological’) and kairos. The latter exists outside the confines of space-time, unmeasured and unmeasurable. In this penultimate session, we’ll take our cue from poems by Alice Oswald, Maurice Riordan and Douglas Dunn that capture the spirit of kairos; poems of sharply heightened awareness that teem with life, even as they appear to stop time in its tracks.

Session 11

7 July, 19.00–21.00

New(ish) Forms with Richard

Explore new(ish) poetic forms, such as the Golden Shovel, the Bop, the Calligram, the Specular, Found poetry and the Duplex with Richard to uncover the pleasures and usefulness of form.

Session 12

14 July, 19.00–21.00

Julia & Richard & Guest Session with Denise Riley

You’ve spent twelve weeks studying poetry, so what next? This session will look at routes into publication and examines how to perform your own poetry; and it will culminate with an online group reading! We’ll also spend the first hour of the session with Denise Riley the author of your second set-text, A Part Song.

Tutors

richard-scott-tutor

Richard Scott

Richard Scott was born in London in 1981. His pamphlet Wound (Rialto) won the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2016 and his poem...

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Richard Scott
JULIA COPUS-black&white

Julia Copus

Julia Copus has published four collections of poetry, the latest of which, Girlhood (Faber 2019), was winner of America’s inaugural Derek Walcott Prize for best...

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Julia Copus

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