Masterclass: poetry (a year-long workshop)
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Learning modes and locations may be different depending on the course start date. Please check the location of your chosen course and read our guide to learning modes and locations to help you choose the right course for you.
- Start Date: 01 Oct 2025End Date: 01 Jul 2026Wed (Evening): 19:40 - 21:40In PersonFull fee £949.00 Senior fee £949.00 Concession £949.00
- Start Date: 02 Oct 2024End Date: 09 Jul 2025This course has startedWed (Evening): 19:40 - 21:40In PersonFull fee £999.00 Senior fee £999.00 Concession £999.00
Please note: We offer a wide variety of financial support to make courses affordable. Just visit our online Help Centre for more information on a range of topics including fees, online learning and FAQs.
What is the course about?
This course is designed to support advanced and professional poets who are working on projects with a view to publication. Selected students will enrol for three terms. This course challenges students to explore new ways of working with language, form and structure in their poetry.
This course is open for enrolment by application only. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to interview for a place. It is suitable only for poets who have advanced workshop experience and/or a history of publication. Writers are invited to submit details of their writing background and workshop experience, as well as three sample poems. Please click "Start Assessment" to begin your submission.
Deadlines for this course are as follows:
Applications due: Monday 25 August 2025
Shortlisted candidate interviews: Friday 12 September 2025
This course includes a showcase event on Friday 26 June 2026.
What will we cover?
Topics will include but are not limited to:
- Poetic form - constructing and deconstructing
- The music of the poem
- Titles
- Line breaks
- Editing
- The lyric I
- Publications - strategies for structuring a book or pamphlet.
What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...
- Redraft your poetry to a more advanced standard incorporating techniques explored in class and feedback received
- Participate constructively in a workshop setting
- Respond to and assess poetry with critical insight.
What level is the course and do I need any particular skills?
This is an advanced poetry writing course. It is suitable only for poets who have advanced workshop experience and/or a history of publication.
How will I be taught, and will there be any work outside the class?
The course will include a mix of tutor led discussion, workshop readings, critical feedback from the class on your own poems, tutor feedback and discussions of theory and structure.
All writing courses at City Lit will involve an element of workshop. This means that students will produce work which will be discussed in an open and constructive environment with the tutor and other students. The college operates a policy of constructive criticism, and all feedback on another student’s work by the tutor and other students should be delivered in that spirit.
For classes longer than one day regular reading and writing exercises will be set for completion at home to set deadlines.
City Lit Writing endeavours to create a safe and welcoming space for all and we strongly support the use of content notes in our classes. This means that learners are encouraged to make their tutor and classmates aware in advance if any writing they wish to share contains material that may be deemed sensitive. If you are unsure about what might constitute sensitive content, please ask your tutor for further clarification and read our expectations for participating in writing courses at City Lit.
Are there any other costs? Is there anything I need to bring?
Please bring a notebook and pen or pencil with you to class. You will need to bring copies of your poems on request. You will be expected to submit your work to the workshop by agreed deadlines, and to partcipate in the showcase event.
Please note that an instalment plan is available for this course, and students can pay the course fee on a termly basis.
When I've finished, what course can I do next?
City Lit has a range of poetry and writing courses on offer.
All students are invited to join us at Late Lines, our regular performance night for City Lit writers. Students are also encouraged to submit their work to Between the Lines, our annual anthology of creative writing. For the latest news, courses and events, stay in touch with the Department on Facebook and Twitter.
Dr Fran Lock is the author of numerous chapbooks and thirteen poetry collections, most recently Hyena! (Poetry Bus Press, 2023), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023, and 'a disgusting lie': further adventures through the neoliberal hell-mouth (Pamenar Press, 2023). White/ Other (87 Press, 2022), a collection of hybrid lyric riff, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Fran was the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at Cambridge University (2022-23), researching feral subjectivity through the lens of the medieval Bestiary. Vulgar Errors/ Feral Subjects, a collection of essays based on her work at Cambridge, was published by Out-Spoken Press last year. Fran is a Commissioning Editor and Maid of All Work at the radical arts and culture cooperative Culture Matters, where she edited the mammoth anthology The Cry of the Poor (2021) and launched the Culture Matters Pamphlet Series in 2023. She is a member of the new Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, and she edits the Soul Food column for Communist Review.
Please note: We reserve the right to change our tutors from those advertised. This happens rarely, but if it does, we are unable to refund fees due to this. Our tutors may have different teaching styles; however we guarantee a consistent quality of teaching in all our courses.