Blog • Poetry School

Fiona Benson has been shortlisted for this year’s Laurel Prize 2026! Read more about her and her poem ‘Bluebells’ from her collection Midden Witch. Image credit: Jessica Farmer of Perspectives Photography About Fiona Fiona Benson lives in Devon with her husband and their two daughters. Midden Witch is her fourth collection and was preceded by Bright Travellers (Seamus Heaney ...

Keen to play around with fragmentation and erasure in your writing? Melanie Hyo-In Han who is teaching her Online course Broken Open: Experimenting with Erasure, Fragmentation, Visual, & Translingual Poetry with us this Autumn, talks us through her top 5 ways writers can experiment with composition in poetry. 1. Erase Take an existing text (a...

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Brandon Kilbourne has been shortlisted for this year’s Laurel Prize 2026! Read more about him and his poem ‘Blindfold Wonder’ from his collection Natural History. Image credit: Jamila K. Grote About Brandon Brandon Kilbourne has a PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of Chicago and over twenty years of experience as a research biologist at natural...

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Confessional poetry was a significant development in twentieth-century American poetry, characterised by poets who explored deeply personal experiences, emotions, and struggles in their work. Poet and Poetry School tutor Nisha Bhakoo who will be teaching her Online course, The Confessional Studio, with us this Autumn, discusses the writers at the forefront of this literary wa...

Cathy Galvin has been shortlisted for this year’s Laurel Prize 2026! Read more about her and her poem ‘Blunt Needles’ from her collection Ethnology. Image credit: Kinga & Maciej Krzyminscy About Cathy Cathy Galvin’s debut poetry book, Ethnology: a love song for Connemara (Bloodaxe Books, 2026), was longlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2026....