About the course
Are you looking to create new work that invigorates and pushes the boundaries of your writing practice? Are you working towards a pamphlet or collection or putting the final edits to one? Do you have a growing number of poems or an idea for a longer project? Are you unsure how to structure the poems and project into a cohesive manuscript to submit to a publisher or agent? Join us for a set of workshops focussing on how to shape compelling poems into a cohesive pamphlet or collection. These sessions focus on writing exercises using examples from contemporary writers and their techniques before discussing how these in turn formed part of a more substantial body of work. (Please note this is a set of four sessions and not individual workshops.)
Why We Write
In the first session we’ll explore why we write, who we write for, and analyse how different writers create compelling narratives that capture the readers imagination. We’ll look at techniques from the role of intriguing titles, to harnessing elements from a songwriting toolbox that make collections sing, and techniques that grip readers through to those all-important compelling last lines. We’ll use writing exercises to create new poems and invigorate your writing practice, looking at themes and examining the pros and cons of reshaping existing pieces to echo these themes. The emphasis is on understanding the role of individual poems and the life they take on in the proximity of other poems within a larger body of work. We’ll end by creating a flexible framework for your real or imagined project, one that I’ll encourage you to return to throughout the following sessions.
The Breath of Life
What makes a single poem or poetry collection more memorable than another? This session mines the techniques used in poetry that keeps us reading and rereading and that plays out in our minds long after we’ve closed the book. We’ll look at a range of genres from the poetry-as-memoir to nature and eco poetry, examining techniques that invigorate characters from the human to the more than human. We’ll explore how different authors use notions of place or tackle difficult subjects through metaphor breathing life into subjects and giving them and authenticity. We’ll become literary magpies writing through their techniques, subjects and genres creating memorable elements and characters to inhabit our poems asking what more these could bring to our projects.
Paper Train
This session focusses on what maintains momentum and how to keep projects on track. When the page or computer screen is intimidatingly empty writers have often drawn creative energy from the visual arts, fellow writers, and research to transport them to unexpected and inspirational places. This session brings together a range of writing exercises that foster opportunities for stimulating encounters with exciting material to invigorate your creative practise. Inspired by examples from contemporary poets we’ll examine how visual art can offer fresh landscapes to visit during fallow periods and the role of research that surprise writers with new concepts and lexicons to dip into. We’ll also revisit the framework created in our first session to assess if it needs to adapt to your developing understanding of your project.
A Journey Into Print
In the final session, Karen will discuss her journey and decisions on the road to publication, including with editors and finding an agent, and how to prepare your poetry manuscript for submission to competitions, agents and publishers. There will also be space to share your work in a supportive environment.
About the tutor
Karen Downs-Barton is a working-class Anglo-Romani writer specialising in poetry, travel and memoir. Her first book, Didicoy, based on her experiences of single parenthood and state childcare won the International Book and Pamphlet Competition in 2022 and was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Her collection, Minx, has been acquired by Chatto & Windus for publication in March 2025. Karen is an experienced creative writing tutor and has worked in schools, King’s College London, Creative Future, Wiltshire Young Artists and the Shakespeare and Race Festival.
Karen won the Cosmo Davenport-Hines award in 2022, was long listed for the Ivan Juritz prize in 2023, highly commended in the AUB International Poetry Prize 2024 and is an alumni of Ledbury’s Voice Coaching programme. Karen’s writing is widely anthologised and has appeared in Tears in the Fence, The High Window, Rattle, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The North amongst others.
Who is it for?
All underrepresented writers—those who face barriers to opportunities due to mental health issues, physical health/disability, sensory impairment, learning disabilities, neurodivergencce, substance misuse, survivors, working class backgrounds, and those from the LGBTQIA+ community, Black, Asian, traveler, mixed heritage or other global majority backgrounds.
Dates & Time:
Day, Dates Month
Time
This course takes place online via Zoom. Links will be sent seven days prior to the first session, and again the day of the first session.
Access:
You can see our full access commitments here. Please add any additional requirements when booking.
Cost:
£40 / £20 concessions
In order to make our resources stretch further, we have to subsidise some workshops with nominal fees well below most online courses. The more who book at full price, the more we’ll be able to offer.
Concessionary places are available for those on benefits, pensioners, unemployed/underemployed or on low wages. We do not ask for proof that you qualify.
If concessionary spaces aren’t displayed below, they are fully booked. We can add you to the waiting list if you e-mail info@creativefuture.org.uk.
