- This class gives you access to your own online classroom. Here, you can connect with other classmates who share your passion!
- Each class also has its own online tutor, who will provide individual feedback on your work. Our tutors are experienced writers with expert knowledge of the industry.
- Every week we’ll release a new learning module in the form of text lessons.
- It’s super flexible, as you can choose the time and place that best suits your schedule. A weekly written assignment, which will be assessed by your tutor, will help you stay on track and monitor your progress along the way.
How does the online class work?
Once you enrol:
- You’ll receive a link to access your online class
- Your class will contains weekly modules, each with various writing tasks and a core assignment
- Every week, you can submit your assignment for written personalised feedback from your tutor
- There are no set class times – complete each module when it suits you during the week
- We recommend spending 2-3 hours per week on each module and assignment
- You’ll be able to enjoy access to the class for a full year, so you can revisit your lessons and refresh your knowledge whenever you need.
Please note that this is a class for adults. If you’re under 18, check out our writing for teenagers classes.
The tutor will email you on the class start date with your first module; please check your Spam/Junk folder for this email.
Week One – Writing Poems That Matter
We start with setting intentions: for our poems, practice, process. We will examine the ‘why’ that carries us to the page – what dreams and desires do we have for the poems we write? What do we want them, if anything, to ‘do’? What makes them matter, if only to ourselves? How can we embed a sense of creative urgency to write braver and bolder work, over the next six weeks?
Week Two – The ‘Long-Armed’ Poem: Letting Anything Belong
This week we will explore examples of poems that roam, wander freely, welcoming various thoughts, feelings, and observations inside their doors, rather than shutting them out. We will reflect on the potential limitations we set ourselves by what we feel should ‘belong’ in a poem, and work to allow chaos to enter our first drafts, before deciding what we let stay, what we choose to cast off.
Week Three – Poems That (Like Us) Contain Multitudes
This week we will challenge the idea that a poem must sing in one note, and instead turn to Donald Hall’s belief that when it comes to poetry: ‘no conflict, no energy’. We will explore the importance of empathy and nuance when writing our own personal experience / the experiences of others, and examine the impact of poems that hold vast emotional landscapes.
Week Four – Poems That Reimagine, Retell, Make Possible
This week we look to the poets who use poetry to imagine a world different than this one. Who turn to the page to rewrite their own stories, reclaim a history. We will investigate the power of erasure and blackout poetry: forms that enable you to take an experience, feeling, or entire text, and transform it into something fresh, new, yours.
Week Five – On Finding The Form
This week we take a deep-dive into the many ways poetic form can both restrict and set free. Make a poem sing or stifle it. We will explore how learning the rules, only to break them, can create delightful surprises for both writer and reader. You will also have the opportunity to devise your own, personalised form of poetry, based on elements that both excite and challenge you.
Week Six – What We Did, What Will Do Next
In this session, we will look back on what we have achieved, however small or large. You will have the chance to ‘showcase’ a poem that you are proud of, and we will set out clear goals and ideas that will support you to keep going, and growing, as a poet.
If you have any further queries, you can check out Frequently Asked Questions.
Our cancellation/refund policy may be viewed here.
About The Tutor
Eileen Casey is a poet, fiction writer and journalist and holds an M.Phil in Creative Writing (Distinction). Her work is widely published in outlets such as The Moth, Verbal Arts Magazine, County Lines: Portrait of a County (New Island); The Ulster Tatler, Ice (Pighog Press, UK), Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times, The Jelly Bucket (USA), The Coffee House (UK), among others. Recent awards include a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship and a Hennessy Literary Award (Emerging Fiction). She also won The Francis Ledwidge Award, The Moore Medallion and The Oliver Goldsmith International Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection ‘Drinking the Colour Blue’ (New Island) was published in 2008. ‘Snow Shoes’ (Arlen House), a debut collection of short stories was published in 2012 and in 2014, Eileen’s collection of memoir essays ‘A Fascination with Fabric,’ was published (Arlen House). Berries for Singing Birds (Arlen House) was published in 2019. She was also a visiting writer on the 2011 Eastern Kentucky University Winter Residency, in Lexington, Kentucky.