Writing Poetry: Voice, Craft and Conversation

Read deeply, write boldly, and find your poetic voice. 

This course creates space in your week for regular reflection and poetic expression — helping you build your literary knowledge, sharpen your insight, and discover the pleasure of shaping language into captivating expression, bursting with truth.

WEEKLY: Tuesday evenings, 6:30-8:30pm 

DATES:
6 weeks
14, 21, 28 April
5, 12, 19 May

Step away from your working week and enter a space for language, reflection and creativity. Over six Tuesday evenings, you’ll explore poetry from diverse eras and voices – historical and contemporary – reading and discussing what makes a poem resonate among a warm, reflective community of thinkers.

Through guided prompts and themed exercises, you’ll experiment across classic and contemporary forms, develop your analytical skills, and write your own original work. We’ll delve into exploring and polishing your craft through structured focus and individual feedback, furthered by thoughtful peer discussion. 

You’ll leave with new ideas, a notebook brimming with your own poetic explorations, and a deeper understanding of how poetry communicates meaning.

Course Breakdown

Each week includes in-class writing prompts and optional coursework to develop your voice further at home.

• Week 1: What Makes a Poem Work? Reading and Close Analysis
• Week 2: Voice, Image and Sound in Poetry
• Week 3: Form and Structure: Classic and Contemporary Approaches
• Week 4: Writing with Constraint and Freedom
• Week 5: Revision, Refinement and Personal Style
• Week 6: Sharing Work and Reflecting on Your Development

Who’s this course for?
Ideal for adults of any background, vocation or professional experience, and young people aged 16+, who want to explore poetry in a welcoming evening setting.

More than a standalone class, this course invites you to become part of an active, weekly creative community — a shared space for reading, writing and conversation. Whether you are a complete beginner, a returning writer, or already developing a more established craft, the structure of the course supports a range of experience levels while encouraging dialogue, collaboration and mutual support.

Perfect for anyone balancing daytime commitments and seeking a creative outlet midweek.

Materials and Requirements

• Please bring a notebook or laptop for writing in class.
• Selected poems will be provided in class for annotating.
• Optional reading and writing tasks may be completed between sessions, outside of class.

Testimonials

• ‘Supportive, thoughtful, and intellectually stimulating from start to end’.
• ‘I hadn’t written something poetic since school — this course helped me rediscover my voice’.
• ‘I loved having a creative space to reflect on today’s poetry alongside historical pieces and to write myself after work each week’.

About the tutor
Deborah Finding is an award-winning poet and queer feminist writer whose books (Vigils for Dead and Dying Girls, Amortisation, My Marxist Valentine) blend sharp thinking with emotional honesty and humour. Widely published and anthologised, her poems have appeared in Magma, fourteen poems, The Little Review, berlin lit and more. Her interests span gender, sexuality, trauma, mythology and popular culture, with writing featured in The Guardian, DIVA and leading academic books and journals. She was the inaugural poet in residence at London’s Soho Poly.

With a PhD from the LSE and degrees from Cambridge, Deborah brings intellectual depth to warm, inclusive creative writing workshops for writers at all levels. She is passionate about wellbeing, social change and the power of the arts to support healing and connection. In her workshops, expect stimulating prompts, contemporary voices, and plenty of space to experiment.

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