My online courses on The Poetry Wire have really kept me going this year – and I’m so impressed by, and grateful to, the vital and varied poets who’ve booked on. We’re just about to start the 4th course, now fully booked, which is ‘Considered Ground‘.

The idea for this course emerged from thinking about how we experience, and write about place. More deeply, about both familiar and unfamiliar places, and especially, the relationships we make with them. I’ve chosen work from some wonderful poets who are exploring these ideas, and ‘Considered Ground’ will look attentively at their poems, and engage specifically with ideas of the layering of time in place, with our own ability to name what we see, to lay claim to history and to express awareness of our own minds and memories within the moment of the poem. As Geraldine Monk says –

‘Let’s name names:
Leven. Kear. Kent. Wyre. Lune.’

The Poetry Wire operates as a private website just for course participants, a place where I put up the two prompts per week, and where finished poems can be shared only with course participants so that they’re still eligible for publication.

There are two new prompts each Friday, which I put up on the Poetry Wire (and which are also emailed). I provide detailed written feedback on one poem each week, after which participants can edit, and I’ll then put work up on The Poetry Wire to share.

One thing that’s working really well is that I find participants are taking the time to read each other’s work and leave comments and suggestions as feedback on the poems, so there’s a great sense of conversation and community developing.

And on Fridays we have a Zoom session and people read their work and talk about it. The Poetry Wire is really just a vehicle for the courses, and a means to keep us all connected, keep that writing spark alive in difficult times. And I keep courses on The Poetry Wire down to only 15 members at a time, so we can retain the sense of being around an imaginary table!

Keep well, everyone, and thank you for your support. There will be a new Poetry Wire course beginning 15th February for six weeks to 19th March. More on that one soon!