Writing and Publishing Poetry
In this five-week online course designed by poet, performer and publishing professional, Sophia Blackwell (Poetry Writers' Handbook) you’ll receive invaluable insight into the process of taking your poetry – and career as a poet – to the next level. Writing and Publishing Poetry will take you on a guide of key milestones as a poet, from developing your voice to finding publishing options that work for you. Students will have the opportunity to workshop their poetry, try different verse forms and editing methods, and create original new work, with the aim of this practical and specific approach being to map out your career as a poet. The final two sessions will focus on guidance around curating a debut, next collection or pamphlet, with a deep dive into publishing and self-publishing options that should help provide next steps.
This course includes:
- Five online sessions, 1.5 hours in length, for a maximum of 20 students
- Practical workshops with takeaway exercises to be applied to your own work and put each session's learning into practice
- A private online forum, to share discussion and writing throughout the course
- A copy of the Poetry Writers' Handbook
- A discounted rate on poetry titles from Bloomsbury Publishing
As an optional extra at a cost of £50, you can get bespoke feedback from Sophia on up to 1,000 words of your poetry. This could be in the form of one long poem or several shorter ones. If the poems are part of a wider collection you can include a one page outline of the collection, including themes and form.
Schedule
Session 1: Getting and staying inspired Bring one poem you have written and one poem by someone you admire and love; come prepared to talk about how they influence your work and what qualities they have that resonate with you. We’ll be swapping those poems by other writers and trying on their approaches in your own work. Poems that inspire you and writing exercises Giving yourself permission to create Your manifesto: what you want your poetry to do Highlights and challenges from your experiences to date
Session 2: Successful editing, structure and verse forms We will go through an example of a live edit and approaches to polishing poems, with real-life examples and advice on where to start – and stop. The second half of this session will take a technical approach to creating a poem, showing how strict forms can be liberating. Editing techniques including reading aloud Editing with performance in mind Formats, forms and poems in translation Beautiful constraint: using structure including lists, recipes, meditations and praise poems
Session 3: Feeding Your Poetry This session will focus on thinking outside the page and developing your voice in an open, experimental way. It will include music, lyrics, collage and cut-ups and the goal is to create a poem you would otherwise not have written, and that will hopefully go on to inform your future work. This session will help you break out of the structures you are familiar with and refresh your poetic voice, finishing with advice on making experimentation and self-nurture part of your creative practice. Thinking outside the page: what inspires you? Songs, lyrics and music Collage and cut-ups – trying on someone else’s voice.
Session 4: Curating a collection or pamphlet A nuts-and-bolts approach to how you might take a disparate folder of poems and turn them into a collection or pamphlet. Choose which option is best for you in terms of structure and format, using examples of recent collections that do something different, with advice on submitting to publishers. The chronological or narrative approach, the cyclical approach, the mixtape approach, the theme-based approach, and a quick look at verse novels What poetry editors are looking for and what you want from a publisher. Traditional publishing opportunities, ways to meet publishers and stand out from the crowd. Connecting with the poetry community
Session 5: Publishing, self-publishing and next steps Bringing it all together, the final session is a deep dive into the wealth of opportunities in today’s market for traditional publishing and self-publishing. We’ll be looking at the pros and cons of various approaches from the do-it-yourself style to a publishing services partnership, or working with an established publisher. Finding the best suppliers, what to spend and avoiding vanity publishers Creating a schedule and launching your book or pamphlet Marketing, publicity, and events Your poetry career: a highly focused look at opportunities to make money, setting your rates and what a poet’s finances look like
Joining instructions will also be emailed to you ahead of the first course session.
Joining Instructions
The key details of the course are below, as well as the link you’ll need to join each session.
When: Tuesday 26th September - 24th October, 7:00pm - 8:30pm (UK Time)
Where: Online
You can download Teams free on your computer, or join via the web: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/microsoft-teams/download-app
BOOKS
As part of your course fee you receive a complimentary copy of the Poetry Writers' Handbook. Please email your postal address to amelia.brown@bloomsbury.com and we will send that out once we have everyone’s address.
SLACK
Finally, we will be using Slack during the course, which is a free, easy-to-use platform that enables everything related to the course to be stored in one place. Please click on the below link to gain access to the Slack workspace that we’ve created for this course:
https://join.slack.com/t/slack-3b65270/shared_invite/zt-22cbwidms-5Nt9KwOwlu2apRGonPYoCg
When you arrive in Slack you’ll see the workspace is called ‘Writing and Publishing Poetry’, with several channels within that workspace. A quick bit of guidance on how these different channels will work:
- Course Etiquette: We’ve put together some course etiquette guidelines. Please have a read and comment to confirm that you’ve seen them.
- General: This is a general discussion board. Sophia, James and myself will all have access but it’s not something we’re going to get involved in. This is for you guys to chat amongst yourselves, discuss, share advice and book recommendations! A great way to start would be to introduce yourselves, share info about your writing journies so far and let the rest of the group know what you’re working on and why you’re here.
- Recordings: We will be recording every class and will post the links to these recordings here.
- Writing Course: We will be sharing the homework in here each week for your reference.
Everyone involved in the course will have access to all channels by default. It’s therefore important to make Slack work for you, so please take a bit of time to manage your notifications. You can do this by right-clicking on the channel and then selecting ‘Change notifications’.
