A poem title can do a lot of heavy lifting – it can compel the reader, create tension and drama, spark curiosity and even offer enough information - in a few words - to free the rest of the poem to be more allusive, symbolic or metaphorical.

But how can we make sure our titles have the muscle to carry this poetic weight?

Join poet Anna Saunders for an inspiring and stimulating workshop in which you will find ways of crafting titles with heft and power.

You will take inspiration from poets such as Safia Elhillo, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Terrance Hayes and others before writing your own potent openings ( and subsequent poems).


Anna Saunders is the author of eight books: Communion, Kissing the She Bear (Wild Conversations Press), Struck (Pindrop Press), Burne Jones and the Fox, Ghosting for Beginners, Feverfew, The Prohibition of Touch, and Eurydice in the Ruined House (all Indigo Dreams). Fran Lock said of Eurydice in the Ruined House ‘this is a deft and generous work in which to delight’, and Samatar Elmi described it as ‘ a triumph of vision, craft, and execution’. Anna has been widely published in journals and holds four Arts Council Awards. She is the Founding Director of Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Anna has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything ’ (The North), ‘a poet of quite remarkable gifts’ ( Bernard O’Donoghue), and ‘a modern myth maker ’-Paul Stephenson. 

The American poet Joseph Fasano said of her ‘Anna Saunders poems reach back to the very origins of who we are, and, in their contact with the ancient things, they transform themselves into freshness, newness, life. Dripping with myth, they sing, they mourn, they celebrate. There is magic in these poems—not the superficial magic of illusion but the deep magic of being.'