You’ll explore and write about juggling family, friendships, two inboxes, that burgeoning book pile. You’ll explore the multiplicity of modern life, in all its velocity and stillness. You’ll read, meditate on, and learn how to write poems that feel fresh, present, so now; poems that capture the energy, rhythm, eerie laptop light of our lives.

Each week you will focus on a different aspect of this modern life (real, embellished or imagined) – from brunching to dating to spin class, or collecting the kids, cooking for the dog, scouring the net for a long lost friend. For guidance and inspiration, you’ll read poems by Morgan Parker, Terrance Hayes, Kim Addonizio, Caroline Bird, Gboyega Odubanjo and Jack Underwood.

Participants will write in-session through a series of guided prompts, and week to week there may be some light homework set.

Please note that this is a seminar-style course and individual feedback with not be given.

Rachel Long’s debut collection, My Darling from the Lions was published by Picador in the UK, in 2020, and by Tin House, in the US, in 2021. It was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and the Jhalak Prize Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour. The US edition of My Darling from the Lions was a New York Times Book Review and named one of the 100 must-read books of 2021 by TIME. She has judged numerous literary prizes including The National Poetry Competition, The Rathbone Folio Prize, The Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Poetry London Prize 2023.

Date: Tuesdays at 6.30pm - 8.30pm , 9 July - 13 August 2024
Location: Online
Cost: €144/€130

Book your place here