This course, Online: Finding your Poetic Voice with Fiona Wright, will take place online.

This dynamic course invites writers of all experience levels to rediscover the joy and spontaneity at the heart of poetry – whether you’re a seasoned poet seeking fresh inspiration or a curious newcomer, this course with Fiona Wright aims to play and experiment, and let unexpected beauty emerge.

Over six lessons, we’ll dismantle the barriers of perfectionism through playful exercises, collaborative creation, and gentle risk-taking. Participants will explore techniques that transform ordinary language into extraordinary expression: constraint-based writing that paradoxically liberates, sensory immersion that sharpens observation, and improvisation games that bypass self-censorship and help you get ‘unstuck.’

We’ll dive into diverse poetic traditions that celebrate playfulness. Each class balances structured experimentation with thoughtful reflection on craft. You’ll leave with surprising new work, practical tools to enliven your creative practice, and a refreshed relationship with language itself. Most importantly, you’ll rediscover what often gets lost in serious literary pursuit and big projects: the pure, electric joy of playing with words.

Week-by-Week Course Breakdown:

Week One: Seeing and Showing 

This week we’ll look at two of the fundamental components of poetry – close observation, and implication. We’ll experiment with ways of honing your poetic eye and paying attention, and with ways to avoid over-explanation, to become comfortable with inference and ambiguity, and trusting your reader to make meaning of their own.

Week Two: Listening and Collecting

Interesting, telling and surprising language is always all around us, and often in the most mundane of places. This week we’ll experiment with listening – to conversations and for patterns of speech – and on collecting ‘sticky’ words and phrases, and on ways these can be used as the basis for poems.

Week Three: Emphasis and Pacing

One of the most fascinating things about poetry is its immense flexibility as a form, and the multitude of tools you have at your disposal – especially in terms of highlighting important information and guiding your reader through the poem. We’ll look at ways of placing and controlling emphasis within a poem, including rhythm and pacing, repetition, density and breakage.

Week Four: Playing with Structure 1 

This week we’ll experiment with constraints – with various poetic forms and structures, and the ways in which they can be used for certain effects, and to push your thinking and practice. We’ll play with rules (and break some) and syntax, and explore what happens under these pressures.

Week Five: Playing with Structure 2

Building upon last week’s experiments, we’ll explore more formal constraints and different experiments in this lesson. We’ll work with adaptations and responses, erasures and terminals, and explore ways of maintaining – or challenging – your voice within different structures and styles.

Week Six: Editing and Refining 

Our final lesson looks at some practical strategies for editing and revising your poems, drawing together what we’re learned so far. We’ll look at some common problems and pitfalls – and possible solutions – and ways to polish up your work so that it sings.

Expected Learning outcomes: 

Participants will:

1. Gain an increased understanding of poetic techniques and some playful approaches to the form
2. Develop an understanding of some poetic forms and experiment with their constraints and possibilities
3. Increase understanding of, and gain experience in, editing and refining their poems.

Participant Requirements

• Internet access and confidence using basic computer software are essential for this program.

Is this course right for you? Please read our FAQ> for important information before enrolling. 

If you have questions about this course, please contact us.

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