‘Making Poetry’ at the Poetry School

I teach a weekly evening class called Poetic Technique at the Poetry School in London. In this course we look at the poem as an assemblage of parts, something that is made, and we look at the tools, or techniques, that were used to make it.

Over the course of three terms, we look at the following aspects of a poem:

• the visual parts, from stanzas to lines to words to letters
• the sounds, including vowels and consonants, rhyme and alliteration, rhythm and metre, and what a caesura does
• the structure of subject matter: narrative, imagery, and keeping it all together

We look at poems old and new, rhyming and unrhymed, traditional and with a twist. We look at sonnets and a couple of other fixed forms, to see how form influences content and how a form can work. We look at revision. And there are opportunities to share your own work in light of what we’ve learned.

The level is Intermediate. But however advanced your writing is, this course is a great chance to really look at technique and the tools of language. See the Poetry School website for details.