“Put more practically, line-break is all you’ve got, and if you don’t master line break – the border between poetry and prose – then you don’t know there is a border.” – Glyn Maxwell

In this workshop, we’ll explore the vital art of the line break: how it shapes rhythm, breath, emotion, meaning and echo. Together, we’ll look at diverse and multifarious approaches to line break from poets such as Denise Levertov, Kim Addonizio, Mark Waldron, Isabelle Baafi, and Edward Hirsch, from the intuitive to the deliberate, the musical to the unexpected.

Through discussions of poems and essays as well as writing time, we’ll experiment with different ways of breaking (and remaking) our lines, discovering how shifts in structure can transform tone, pace, and sense, showing the line for what it is: the heartbeat of a poem.

Kim Moore’s pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. Her first collection The Art of Falling (Seren 2015) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021) won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection.  Her first non-fiction book What The Trumpet Taught Me was published by Smith/Doorstop in May 2022. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. A hybrid book of lyric essays and poetry Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism was published by Seren in March 2023.

We’re able to offer 2 bursary tickets to this workshop for those facing financial difficulty. Please email info@poetrysociety.org.uk to request one of the places. No proof of financial difficulty is required. 

This workshop will take place on Zoom. You will receive the Zoom link 24 hours in advance of the workshop. Please note that this workshop will be recorded.

Tickets are £17 for society members and £27 for non-members.