Monday Night Group

  Poetry School Workshops in Liverpool

  In association with the Dead Good Poets Society

  A series of workshops for poets looking for new skills and ideas. The Poetry School runs specialist courses and workshops all round the UK, and is delighted to be working with the Bluecoat and the DGPS in Liverpool for the first time this year. Visit www.poetryschool.com for more details.

  Breaking the Habit: brush up your technique

  Tutor: Helen Farish

  Venue: The Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX

  Date: Thursday 9 October

  Time: 11am-4.30pm

  Fee: £45 (£35 concs)

  Whether you have been writing poetry for a long time or are relatively inexperienced, this workshop will help you focus on technique. Looking at the close relationship between writing and reading, exciting examples of contemporary American and British poems will be used as tools to reveal our own (perhaps habitual) techniques and methods. Once revealed, we will reflect on which are working for us and which need to be questioned.

  How to book: please send a cheque to the Poetry School, 81 Lambeth Walk, London SE11 6DX

  Narrative and Memory: inspiration for your writing

  Tutor: Vona Groarke

  Venue: The Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX

  Date: Friday 10 October

  Time: 10.30am-4.30pm

  Fee: £45 (£35 concs)

  Without the traditional devices of character development and extended plot, and with only limited resources of dialogue and point of view, are poems really capable of telling stories? Bring along a poem that wants to tell some sort of story. Using these and other achieved examples, the workshop will look at how poems can cut to the quick of things and what they do when they get there.

  How to book: please send a cheque to the Poetry School, 81 Lambeth Walk, London SE11 6DX

  The Element of Surprise

  Tutor: Jean Sprackland

  Venue: The Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX

  Date: Saturday 24 January

  Time: 10.30am-4.30pm

  Fee: £45 (£35 concs)

  'No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader' (Robert Frost). Poems may be accurate and deeply felt, but unless they contain an element of surprise they may fail to lift off the page and live. Through exercises and experiments, you'll catch yourselves by surprise to reveal truths you didn't know knew. Jean's own work is grounded in ordinary emotions and settings, shot through with an extraordinary imagination.

  How to book: please send a cheque to the Poetry School, 81 Lambeth Walk, London SE11 6DX