Upcoming courses
Correspondence Courses
Our online/ correspondence courses are 6 or 12 weeks in length. Each week you receive a tutorial (via email) with written material and links to audio and video recordings. There are various quick tasks within the email and then one main writing task for the week. You can send that work to Live Canon for detailed written feedback each week. There is also an online discussion group for the course, which you can dip into at any time, and discuss work with other participants and get their feedback. The courses are designed to be as flexible as possible around your other life commitments. Feedback from participants:
'The tutorials are absolutely packed with information, inspiration and ideas. Way more than I was expecting'.
'I've been on quite a lot of poetry courses. This is the first that has really changed me as a writer.'
'I found myself relating pretty much everything I was reading, writing or thinking to the course. It was three months of pure engagement for me'.
'This sort of correspondence course is a god send if, like me, you are on the other side of the world from the poetry community you used to be a part of...'
Autumn Term 2020
Writing 'Climate Crisis' (12 weeks, starts 16th Sept)
Book here: https://tinyurl.com/ybedlmeyThe course will spend 12 weeks exploring poetry, from across the world, which has been written in response to the current global climate emergency. Each week we will be using aspects of the environmental discourse to inspire new poems.
Black British Poets - 1945-1970 (6 weeks, starts Oct 7th)
Book here: https://tinyurl.com/ybedlmeyThis course explores the incredibly vibrancy of black British poetry in the wake of the windrush. The course will be packed with interviews with keys poets, and literary historians specialising in the period, as well as a wealth of readings and videos. Each week there will be a writing prompt based on the poetry read that week, with weekly peer and tutor feedback.
Gathering and Editing your First Collection (6 weeks, starts 16th Sept)
Book here: https://tinyurl.com/ybedlmeyIf you have written a substantial body of poems and you are starting to think about gathering them into a first collection, this course aims to support that process. We work through how to select material, give a collection cohesion and a structural arc and how to be ruthless with what you leave out. We look at the editing of individual poems and the balance of the collection as a whole. It is a 6 week course, hoping to guide you through this, often daunting, process.
Playwriting for Poets (12 weeks, starts 16th Sept)
Book here: https://tinyurl.com/ybedlmeyInteresting in exploring a new genre? This 12 week course gets to the heart of theatrical writing and dramaturgy. It includes the opportunity to have your work read and recorded by actors.
Writing the Classics (12 weeks, starts 16th Sept)
Book here: https://tinyurl.com/ybedlmey
Exploring how poets have engaged with the literature and mythology of ancient Greece and Rome.
Explore the wide range of poetry in the English language responding to classical literature, and write 12 of your own new poems.
Writing poetry for children (6 weeks, starting October 7th)
Book here: https://tinyurl.com/ybedlmey
Explore the history of poetry for children, and embark on writing your own work - with weekly feedback (including feedback from a panel of young readers!)
Spring Term 2021
Lyrics and Librettos (6 weeks)
A six week course on writing text for music. How does this differ from writing poetry. How to lyricist/composer collaborations work. How have different lyricists and librettists approached their work?
Black Modernists (6 weeks)
This course explores the work of writers of colour whose work was vital to the modernist movement. The course will be illustrated by newly commissioned audio and video recordings. Each week there will be a writing prompt and peer and tutor feedback.Writing Science (12 weeks)
This course looks at how poets have engaged with science (and vice versa) throughout two-thousand years of writing. We look at poetry and maths, geology, physics, astrophysics, chemistry, medicine... and science fiction. Each week you'll be prompted to create your own new work.
Political Poetry (12 weeks)
Have things you'd like to say about the world right now? Want to channel that into your writing? In this course we look at the many ways poetry can engage with politics including form, protest poetry, discourse, rhetoric and vocabulary, the poet as witness, satire and public poetry. You'll then be inspired to write 12 new poems of your own...
Woman the Canon (12 weeks)
This course explores the work of 12 under-known female poets from the eighteenth and nineteenth century and prompts you to create new poems in response to their work.
Summer Term 2021
Writing the Classics (12 weeks)
Exploring how poets have engaged with the literature and mythology of ancient Greece and Rome.
Explore the wide range of poetry in the English language responding to classical literature, and write 12 of your own new poems.
Experimenting with Form (12 weeks)
Reasonably confident poet, but want to know more about form and metre? This course will mentor you through exploring, playing and experimenting with form in your work, covering forms including the modern sonnet, tanka and haiku, the ghazal, sestina, villanelle, terza rima, visual and concrete poetry, epistolatory poems, iambic pentameter and rhyme royal...Lost Lionesses (12 weeks)
Our course Woman the Canon explores the works of 12 under-known female poets from the 18th and 19th centuries. But what about the women who came before? Who were the first female poets to write and be published in the UK? This courses explores the work of 12 under-known, under-studied, and in some cases forgotten, female poets from the 16th and 17th centuries. We'll explore one poet each week, with each tutorial including the poet's work, video/audio content, and writing tasks to inspire new you to write new poems.