LEARN COURSES
Our poetry and creative-writing courses with Shane Rounce are free to do. Every course includes an open practical lesson, a four-module learning route and a project. Read, write and experiment now; full course enrolment is not open yet.
New to poetry? Start with a manageable writing practice and close reading. If you already have drafts, choose a craft question, an experiment with form or a project that brings several poems together.
Our courses use original exercises and permitted examples. They are independent Learn Courses plans, not Poetry School enrolments or a claim that its tutors teach here. Personal disclosure and public performance are optional.
51 course plans
Keep a seven-day notebook of precise observations without turning every entry into a poem. Write three short pieces from one ordinary scene using different starting images.
Create a timeline marking remembered, documented and uncertain details. Write a sensory scene and a separate reflective passage without forcing a lesson.
Select an object, place or invented speaker as an optional route into the subject. Draft a poem in which daily action carries absence without requiring personal disclosure.
Record sounds, names, uses and changes in a place I can safely visit or remember. Distinguish my perspective from claims about a whole community.
Make a precise observation sheet for my own or rights-cleared artwork. Draft a poem that argues with, addresses or moves beyond the artwork rather than describing every detail.
Write a short account of what the piece appears to be doing before prescribing changes. Comment on specific words and structures and distinguish a reading problem from a preference.
Annotate diction, syntax and structural shifts without guessing the writer’s intentions. Read a permitted poem aloud and compare sound, tone and argument.
Lay out one original paragraph in three line structures and compare the pressure at each break. Test stanza sizes, pauses and white space against the speaker’s movement.
Map argument and change in public-domain sonnets without assuming one fixed model. Write a fourteen-line poem with an intentional turn and a documented rhyme or sound plan.
Compare paragraph movement with lineated movement in permitted examples. Turn one original scene into a prose poem, fragment sequence and short lyric.
Write a factual inventory of an ordinary object and notice its material history. Draft three metaphors and examine what each reveals and conceals.
Map what a fictional speaker knows, hides and wants the reader to believe. Write the same incident through two responsibly imagined narrators.
Write a scene where a small action shows a relationship. Draft a letter poem with an intentional gap between what is said and meant.
Create a sensory notebook with optional routes that fit different access needs. Draft a poem grounded in one body’s perspective without claiming a universal experience.
Map a route, object or language association without requiring a personal migration story. Draft a poem that allows two places to coexist without reducing either to a symbol.
Keep a repeated observation log and distinguish what I saw from what I inferred. Write paired poems about a small detail and the larger system around it.
Use safe observation or permitted records to map tides, uses and seasonal change. Draft a poem that keeps the water’s material reality visible.
Choose a local effect or permitted dataset and mark uncertainty and source limits. Write one intimate and one larger-scale draft without presenting speculation as fact.
Record the source, cultural context and the limits of my authority to adapt it. Draft from a minor figure, object or unresolved moment rather than retelling the whole plot.
Collect public-domain or appropriately licensed records and note gaps in the archive. Separate the record’s assertions from my interpretation and unanswered questions.
Check source rights and personal-data boundaries before selecting text. Create an original erasure and explain how selection changes the source meaning.
Sketch a poem where spacing or orientation carries a stated relationship. Compare scale, weight and shape at actual reading sizes without making everything decorative.
Write a scene where one ordinary condition changes and track its consequences. Ground an uncanny image in sensory and material detail.
Choose a public issue and separate lived experience, research and opinion. Compare address, testimony, question and scene without borrowing another person’s voice.
State who or what the humour addresses and check it does not rely on humiliating a workshop peer. Draft a short comic poem using pause, reversal and specific detail.
Mark breath, pace and emphasis on an original poem without prescribing one correct accent. Record contrasting readings and explain where the listener’s attention should move.
Storyboard an original poem as audio or a small digital interaction and name the added meaning. Capture a short reading and edit distractions while preserving the intended performance.
Inventory drafts and identify recurring pressures without forcing every poem into one theme. Create two sequences and compare opening, transitions, pace and ending.
Research current calls and record eligibility, rights, fees and deadlines without promising acceptance. Format an original sample and draft a concise covering note and biography.
Review a small set of drafts and record images, structures and habits. Rewrite one draft using an unfamiliar constraint without assuming novelty means improvement.
Write a scene in which a character wants something specific and meets resistance. Draft the same moment from different distances and choose what the reader can know.
Map what is mine to tell, what needs consent and what can remain fictional. Draft a scene using a meaningful action or object rather than a family label.
Create a repeatable observation practice with alternatives to breath or bodily exercises. Compare invocation, question and refrain in permitted texts with clear cultural context.
Choose whether an AI tool is useful at all and record what writing must stay private. Use invented or my own permitted material for a small comparison with an unaided draft.
Rewrite one original statement using different sentence lengths and positions of emphasis. Compare registers, invented words and precise diction without mistaking complexity for force.
Outline a story in five actions, then choose the action the reader needs to encounter first. Write three stanzas in which the same refrain changes meaning as the events develop.
Use a public-domain story or an original tale to separate its events from the values attached to them. Write from the perspective of an invented minor figure without borrowing a contemporary translation's wording.
Make an original sound inventory and compare repeated consonants, vowels and pauses. Create a short notation for volume, silence and overlapping sounds, with a plain-language key.
Draft a collaboration agreement covering credit, editing, withdrawal and the intended audience. Create two invented voices responding to the same object, keeping their language distinct.
Storyboard one poem with an image that illustrates it and another that deliberately complicates it. Plan six original shots with permissions, locations and low-equipment alternatives.
Write a review brief specifying the book, edition, intended reader and the question the review will answer. Analyse two permitted short passages and distinguish an observation from a judgement.
Select five original drafts and identify a craft question that connects them without forcing a single theme. Prepare a workshop response that names the writer's intention, locates evidence and proposes one testable revision.
Define a fictional reading context and audience range without assuming all children share the same interests or abilities. Write an original refrain that supports joining in without making loud performance compulsory.
Mark natural stresses in a paragraph and compare conversational and regular rhythms. Draft a short metrical poem then disturb the pattern at a meaningful moment.
Create a bank of phrases whose meaning changes when repeated in a new context. Draft a villanelle or pantoum using my own phrases and track each altered implication.
Collect sensory notes from one permitted place and separate observation from explanation. Compare juxtaposition and seasonal attention using rights-cleared examples and careful cultural context.
Record translator, language, edition and permissions for a short source. Compare permitted versions or supplied glosses and discuss what changes without claiming expertise I do not have.
Choose diverse permitted texts with edition, translator and historical notes. Support observations about form and voice without treating one writer as a whole culture.
Collect accessible public science sources and distinguish established explanation from speculation. Record a small safe everyday process and separate observation from metaphor.
Analyse permitted published examples for sequence, surprise and text-image division without reproducing their pages. Outline an original story with clear character pressure and a purposeful ending.
Write a small vocabulary and a transparent generation rule using my own language. Implement a deterministic seed or simple branching structure and record its assumptions.