Poetry Courses
Study online or in London

Modernism was a period defined by radical thinking boldly proclaimed in manifestos and expressed through a variety of different art forms. Within literature, pre-conceived notions of narrative and syntax were challenged, characters were developed using insights drawn from psychology, and poets explored the visual representation of their words on the page. As boundaries were extended, new ‘isms’ were born. Through following the development of Modernist literature in Europe and America, this course will compare the changes in the written word to the changes occurring within art, architecture, music and film.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Wedged between the two wars, the poets of the 1930s were drawn to forces larger than themselves. For poets such as W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, war, revolution and the allure of communism dwarfed mere personal anxieties. Others – such as William Empson, Kathleen Raine and Dylan Thomas – found a seam of spiritualism in other, more mystical, even Romantic antecedents. Our course traces these discrepant paths through the decade.

Join us to get an overview of how English poetry has developed over the centuries by looking closely at some classic poems and seeing how ideas of the time shaped their form and their subject matter – from epics made to be sung in the mead hall to the concentrated elegance of the Renaissance sonnet to the melancholy of the Romantic ode to the free verse of modern times.

We look at how some women poets challenged the expectations of their families and the society in which they lived (reflected in the male-dominated publishing world of their time) to create highly original poetry which changed people’s views of what poetry could achieve.











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Follow the paths taken by four of the most courageous, life-affirming, uncompromisingly individual poets of the modern era, as they confront the challenges of psychological, sexual and artistic alienation (Baudelaire), religious and political conformity (Dickinson and Mandelstam), and of a world lost to materialism and the march of technology, devoid of all spirituality (Rilke: “You must change your life”).



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

In this introductory course, we will read and discuss Irish poetry from across the twentieth century, examining how poets responded to cultural and political issues, such as Irish Independence, religion, and the Troubles. Poets will include: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Louis MacNeice, Patrick Kavanagh, Derek Mahon, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and many others.

With its wild, rugged terrain and history of radicalism, the West Country was an ideal setting for the Romantic imagination. Drawing on a selection of poems, letters, journals and manifestos, this course explores how the landscape and people of the South West shaped the ideas and inspired the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This class explores the work of Bob Dylan, examining his song writing, musical style, and persona in the context of American cultural, political, and musical history, exploring how Dylan engages with American culture through his absorption and reworking of multifarious aspects of both historical and modern Americana.

We look at four poets who struggled to be heard or accepted because their work was so different from what their society expected. What were the barriers they had to overcome and how did they win through to become admired and highly regarded? What made one of the poets stop writing at the age of 21 and the other three continue for the rest of their lives? What makes the poetry of all of them so original, and what can we learn from their resilience?

In the house where many of them were written, we will explore why Keats’s poems are regarded as exceptionally beautiful. How did he achieve this? We will see that it wasn’t luck or simply inspiration, but the result of choices which reflect important aspects of Keats’ personality. Includes ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, Ode to a Grecian Urn’ and ‘To Autumn’.







This course will take place at Keats House, 10 Keats Grove, Hampstead, London NW3 2RR.

Through the words of six female poets from different countries spanning a hundred years, we will explore what it meant to be a woman in the 20th Century. The poems we will read cover a diverse range of topics such as desire and sexuality, loneliness and race, gender and feminism. Includes poems by Charlotte Mew, Anna Akhmatova, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Forugh Farrokhzad, Gwendolyn Brooks and Carol Ann Duffy.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.