Courses are always shaped to your requirements but are likely to have these points in common:
- You will communicate with more conviction.
- You will learn to craft narratives that hook and convince readers.
- Finding time to write is part of the challenge. I will help you create a writing habit.
- You will study a range of literary genres to deepen your understanding of great writing.
- Your writing project could be a collection of articles, first novel, a sequence of poems, or a non-fiction project.
- You will study relevant writing exercises to perfect everyday writing skills for articles, blog posts, and even emails.
Outline (Groups)
Session 1: “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”
A warm-up session to identify individual potential and dispel unfounded fears. Participants bring a piece of literature they like for discussion. They then read some “nonsense poetry,” followed by speedwriting exercises to “excerpt” from the flow of the imagination.
Session 2: “Speak the Speech, I pray you”
What can we learn from examples in Shakespeare of motivational speech? Reading poetry aloud, creating pauses and emphasis, learning rhythms. Rousing metaphor.
Session 3: What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Analysing love poems removes inhibitions about expression, through the language of trust and intimacy. It increases the range of communication and capacity for empathy.
Session 4: Epic Tales
Epic tells stories on the most heroic scale. It contains all the themes of poetry: the travels and travails of the individualist or the team-player, conflict, defeat, victory, and apotheosis.
Session 5: The Sonnet
The sonnet has produced some of poetry’s most enduring soundbites. How do poets contain and focus their most expansive visions within the restrictive formula of the sonnet?
Session 6: A “Rattle-Bag”
When Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney decided to co-edit an anthology of poems they called it the “rattle-bag.” This session is a celebration. Participants bring and share aloud the works they have learned, loved, and written.