THE POETRY ROOM
ONLINE POETRY GROUP
The next Poetry Room four-week online course will take place in February–March 2026, for four weeks from 19 February meeting each Thursday afternoon 2–4pm UK.
What is The Poetry Room?
I designed the Poetry Room so that each week we can take a proper look at a distinct part of poetry writing. I didn’t want to create another generic workshop space that sets participants the task of writing into a basic prompt, but rather to think of poetry as a kind of physics, or an expansive lens that not only inspects and dissects a poem but extracts a kind of thinking we can use to enhance and push our own writing.
I wanted to focus the Poetry Room on intricacy and precision, and so over the four weeks across February and March we will look at a series of different techniques you can each apply to your poems to make them more interesting and dynamic on the page.
Week 1: Complicating the Lyric
For those of us who write traditional lyric poems (which are loosely thought of as first person and autobiographical) – how can we further develop our poems, informed by our lived experiences and push beyond the event. How can we resist falling into the trap of having a poem be saturated by unearned emotionality and clichéd ideas? In this first session we will look at lyric poems that knead life exceptionally and consider how they avoid tipping over into the saccharine and gauche.
Week 2: Beyond Metaphor
We know that poetry relies on metaphor to drive it, to act as its engine and wheel. A metaphor wants to carry information from one thing to another, to somehow make two disparate ideas converse. But how do we do that in a way that doesn’t rely on hackneyed language or overused and overly evocative images? This session will look at ways we can generate a material landscape within the poem that networks both ideas and feelings.
Week 3: Poems as Cinema
Developing on from this idea of metaphor and metonym is the notion that poems and stanzas can act as a kind of cinematic frame that moves the poem along in fragments. How then do we avoid the simple ‘telling’ of what our speakers see or experience in a poem, a push into something more filmic but still with the weight and pressure of a good poetic idea? In week 3 of the Poetry Room, we will look at poems which are written in ‘high definition’ and borrow from the techniques of cinema and visual art to really utilise the function of the image and scene.
Week 4: The Editing Suite
Back by popular demand, almost always poets ask for a session on editing so I’m going to finish the course with a look at how we can develop our poems through the drafting process. What happens once you have that first bit of text down? What do you push and what do you cut? Here I’ll share with you everything I’ve learnt about editing from my experiences as both a poet and an editor to ensure that when you’re on the fourth or fifth draft, you’re comfortable and confident in shaping where the poem wants to go and what it wants to become.
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Duration and Registration:
Course dates: Thursdays 19 February, 26 February, 5 March & 12 March 2026, 2–4pm UK.
Course Fee: £250
Each course is limited to 15 participants. Course delivery will be via Zoom. In the event that you are unable to attend a workshop, we can send you a link to a video recording of that session to watch back.
‘Playback’ Recording-only Access to The Poetry Room (February–March 2026)
If you are unable to make the Poetry Room sessions work with your schedule, but would still like to benefit from the discussions, exercises and materials from the workshops, we’re pleased to make available this recording-only access option. With Playback access, you will receive links to the password-protected session recordings together with all handouts and materials, by email the day after each session, to catch up with at a time that works for you.
“I can’t recommend The Poetry Room highly enough. Anthony creates an inspiring creative space to explore new ways of thinking & working. I particularly love the encouraging and incisive feedback on our week-old poems. By far, the most productive poetry space I know.”
— Simon Maddrell
“I keep coming back to The Poetry Room because it’s the most generative workshop I’ve attended, and is always both challenging and supportive. Anthony’s teaching has a way of encouraging you to think in new ways about both reading and writing poetry. I’ve written a lot, learnt a lot, and met many wonderful poets in the Room”
— Sophia Argyris
For all enquiries regarding The Poetry Room please email: info (at) anthonyanaxagorou.com