Explore the joys & dramas of school through poetry in this fun, inspiring workshop—no homework, just great writing! All levels welcome. ✏️

School Days: Writing Poems about School

School days are not just the best, but also often the most rich and varied days of a life, and in this workshop we will explore the wide range of ways in which poems can bottle the energy and variety of school. From memorable fellow pupils to eccentric, angelic or downright scary teachers, from the everyday eurekas of the classroom to the everyday chaos of the playyard. We’ll celebrate the joy of being young and also consider the way that school poems can lead us into the serious themes of poetry: those first experiences of friendship, love, tragedy and the unfairnesses of the way the world works, which school can bring us.

The workshop will be led by Jeanette Burton and Jonathan Edwards, editors of the popular recent Candlestick Press pamphlet School Days, and will draw on some fabulous poems from in and beyond the pamphlet, by poets including Mary Ruefle, Charles Causley, Kathryn Bevis and Kim Moore. We’ll also consider writing about the experience of working in teaching, and the rich access this can give to all sorts of poems, from observations of the extraordinary people we work with, to protest poems about the difficulties of the role.

Whether you want to write a poem about a long-lost and wonderful schoolfriend, a celebration of a favourite teacher, a fabulous memory of school which has been burning a hole in your pocket for years, or even a protest letter to the Education Minister, this is the workshop for you. We can promise a fun, supportive and really productive writing day, in which there is no homework, detention or lines! New and experienced writers are heartily welcomed.

All participants receive a free School Days pamphlet from the wonderful Candlestick Press.

About your tutors with The Writing School:

Jeanette Burton is an award-winning poet from Belper in Derbyshire. She has been placed in several competitions and has poems published by Atrium, Dust, IS&T, Poetry Wales, Mslexia, The Friday Poem and The North. Her debut pamphlet, Ostriches: Ten Poems about My Dad, is available from Candlestick Press. She is a tutor with The Writing School and a Shadow Writer for Beyond The Spectrum, a UK wide autism arts and creative writing programme led by and for autistic writers.

Jonathan Edwards’s first collection of poems, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018), also received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award, and his poem about Newport Bridge was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. He received the Troubadour Prize in 2022. Jonathan lives in Crosskeys, South Wales, and is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Cardiff University.

https://thewritingschool.co.uk

https://www.candlestickpress.co.uk