Poetry Courses
Study online or in London
From introductory courses to the more in-depth longer courses, revisit classic works or enjoy discovering new poets, sharing your views in lively class discussions.
16 courses available
- Poetry Cooked and Raw: Emily Dickinson to the Beat Poets
We will explore how poets changed during the 20th century from writing in formal ‘poetic’ language and regular forms towards writing in more natural language, freer forms and with more direct expression of feelings. We will look at free verse, political poetry, the Beat Poets, confessional poetry and prose poetry.
Keeley Street
Wed 23 Sep 2026Laurie SmithFull fee £279.00 Senior fee £223.00 Concession £181.00 
Making it Modern: A Survey of 20th century poetryWhat makes a poet modern? What is the difference between modern poetry and modernist poetry? How has modern poetry informed the work of poets writing today? Come and explore the exciting range of poetry written in the twentieth century in a supportive and energising group context.
Online
Mon 12 Oct 2026Suzannah V. EvansFull fee £129.00 Senior fee £129.00 Concession £84.00- An introduction to poetryCome and revel in the possibilities of expression and form offered by poems across time, guided by lively group discussion and tutor expertise.
Keeley Street
Sat 24 Oct 2026Suzannah V. EvansFull fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00 - 20th to 21st Century War Poetry: Owen, Apollinaire and Trakl to Akhmatova and Darwish
Explore the astonishing range of poetic responses to a hundred years of warfare, acts of witnessing, endurance, defiance and condemnation by writers across the globe: Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in Britain, Apollinaire, Brecht, Milosz, Celan, Akhmatova and Stepanova in Europe and Russia, Darwish and Zhadan in the Middle East and Ukraine, and many others. How do they describe the indescribable? High art or doggerel, what does it matter once the bombs start to fall?
Online
Thu 5 Nov 2026Stephen WinfieldFull fee £139.00 Senior fee £111.00 Concession £90.00 - A Day with T.S. Eliot
Come and explore the Nobel Prize-winning poet, T. S. Eliot, in a stimulating group context where our focus will be on immersing ourselves in the language and contexts of his striking poetry.
Keeley Street
Sat 12 Dec 2026Suzannah V. Evans, Phyllis RichardsonFull fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00 - E E Cummings and Stevie Smith
Come and join an introduction and exploration of the poetry of E E Cummings and Stevie Smith. We will read, discuss and enjoy a selection of their poetry and consider how the poets shape our responses.
Keeley Street
Sat 16 Jan 2027Laurie SmithFull fee £39.00 Senior fee £31.00 Concession £25.00 - Poetry Reading Group
This Poetry Reading Group explores a wide range of poetry across different themes and periods, in a supportive and friendly group. Each week we will read and discuss a selection of about four or five poems, focusing on a different theme each session. The tutor will select poetry from different poets, forms and periods, introducing you to a broad range of poetic voices and perspectives. Poetry is for everyone - come and join us!
Full fee £259.00 Senior fee £207.00 Concession £168.00 - British Literature 1950-2000
Are there distinct qualities to the literature of each nation of the United Kingdom? How did Welshness, (Northern) Irishness, Scottishness and Englishness manifest themselves in writing of the second half of the twentieth century? Find out through the novels, poems and plays of Dylan Thomas, John Fowles, Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel and Jackie Kay.
Keeley Street
Tue 26 Jan 2027Lewis WardFull fee £239.00 Senior fee £191.00 Concession £155.00 - The Poetry of W. B. Yeats: early to middle poems, 1899-1914
This one-day course examines how Yeats’ career spans three decades of experimentation. Tracking the development of the poet chronologically, selecting the greatest poems from each collection in turn, we shall discover the variety of his artistic output: love poet, lyric poet, balladeer, political poet, symbolist and elegist.
Keeley Street
Sat 27 Feb 2027Alexander Fairbairn-DixonFull fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00 - Poetry of the Troubles: Seamus Heaney and His Contemporaries
On this in-college literature course we will read Seamus Heaney’s North (1975), his first collection to deal explicitly with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, alongside poems on the same theme by contemporaries including Michael Longley, Seamus Deane and Derek Mahon.
Keeley Street
Fri 23 Apr 2027Lewis WardFull fee £189.00 Senior fee £151.00 Concession £123.00 - The Poetry of W.B. Yeats: later poems, 1919-1939
This in-college, one-day course examines the final two decades of Yeats’ career. Tracking the development of the poet chronologically, selecting the greatest poems from each collection in turn, we shall discover the variety of his artistic output: modernist, elegist, symbolist, love poet, lyric poet, and political poet.
Keeley Street
Sun 9 May 2027Alexander Fairbairn-DixonFull fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00 - Occupied France in Fiction and Film
This class explores the world of occupied France in literature and film, delving into the culture and character of survival and betrayal that shaped the French experience of the years 1940 to 1944. From writers such as Joseph Kessel and Patrick Modiano to filmmakers Jean Pierre Melville and Joseph Losey, the class dissects artistic meditations on the ordeal of France and its citizens in its darkest hour.
Keeley Street
Thu 13 May 2027Richard NilandFull fee £189.00 Senior fee £151.00 Concession £123.00 - Keats and eternity
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.Off Site
Sat 5 Jun 2027Alexander Fairbairn-DixonFull fee £49.00 Senior fee £39.00 Concession £32.00 - Samuel Beckett's Women: the Works and the Life
Explore Beckett’s relationships with women - a lifetime’s evolution, on and off the page - from the antagonisms and entrapments of his earliest fictions, the Novellas and the Trilogy, to the astonishing transfer of power represented by Winnie in ‘Happy Days’, the preponderance of females in the later short plays and monologues, and the renewed ambivalence towards “the source of all evil” in ‘Company’ and ‘Ill Seen Ill Said’.
Keeley Street
Fri 11 Jun 2027Stephen WinfieldFull fee £139.00 Senior fee £111.00 Concession £90.00 - 'This morning's minion': the passions of Gerard Manley Hopkins
This day course will explore why Hopkins wrote highly original poems of great power and beauty, but didn’t attempt to have them published in his lifetime. We will look at how this relates to his conversion to Roman Catholicism and, in turn, how this may have related to fears about his sexuality.
Keeley Street
Sat 12 Jun 2027Laurie SmithFull fee £79.00 Senior fee £63.00 Concession £51.00
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