Page to Stage – Poetry Out Loud

Page to Stage – Poetry Out Loud

A course designed to help you build toolkits for writing poetry explicitly for sharing, and techniques for performance and public speaking.

By Fay Roberts

Select date and time

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 18:30 - 21:00 UTC

Location

Online

Refund Policy

Refunds up to 8 days before event

About this event

This course is designed as a chance to learn lyrical tips and techniques, all the way from how to get started or break through a creative block, covering the fundamentals of form, discipline, and structure, gaining inspiration as we go, through how to use poetry to tell stories and share personal feelings, all the way to taking poetry to a wider audience via performance, giving you greater confidence in your words and ability to speak them in public.

We’ll be talking about how to centre your own voice and tastes in your writing, and how to find (and build) your audience, and we’ll be talking frankly about the highs and lows of writing and performing, giving you the chance to explore with like-minded folk, both those new to the craft and more experienced writers and performers.

I have delivered a shorter version of this course in-venue, and have decided to make it longer and fortnightly instead of weekly, in order to allow people opportunities to practise the techniques discussed between sessions before moving on to the next. And, while this course is designed with an overall flow in mind, I’m opening it up so that people can either book for the entire thing, or choose individual modules that suit their requirements better.

The events I run are founded on mutual respect and support, so threaded throughout every session will be the no-self-diss philosophy that underpins a lot of the work I do with creative and/ or marginalised folk, and we will always be working explicitly to make these sessions as supportive as possible while encouraging people to tackle difficult topics and new techniques from a position of safety. I am also committed to accessibility to learning and the arts in as many ways as I can, so we will be using tools like closed captioning and, where necessary, images descriptions, etc. Please let me know if you have any particular access requirements.

Come prepared to listen and speak, read and write, and have a good time working to develop your personal style of creating and delivering your work.

Each session will be 2½ hours long at most with a decent break in the middle. We will use breakout rooms so that you can work in smaller groups/ pairs if necessary, and you will have access to each following session’s materials, as appropriate, at least a week in advance.

Monday 13-Jan-25: Let’s Get Started

This first session will be an introduction to your tutor and your coursemates. We will talk about the structure of the course and what I expect to work through, plus your own individual aims and objectives.

We will also have a crack at some quick methods to warm up and get started writing – whether it’s for the first time today, this week, this month, this year, this decade, or ever!

Monday 27-Jan-25: Painting with Words

Ekphrastic Poetry – writing poetry based on visual art stimuli, and a great way to deliberately engage more senses in your writing.

We will be primarily looking at English versions of haiku and other short (mostly Japanese, one Welsh) poetry forms used to distill a specific scene or emotion, with space to move into other, longer forms as appropriate.

Monday 10-Feb-25: Humorously Enough

In this session we will be looking at how to write and perform humorously, including the use of rhyme to set (and confound!) reader/ listener expectations, and the importance of delivery in conveying humour.

We will be primarily looking at limericks and clerihews – humorous rhyming poetry forms – and discussing how else we can convey humour in poetry.

Monday 24-Feb-25: Formality

This session will focus on the use of standard forms in poetry writing, talking about the limitations and usefulness of strict form/ structure, the importance of repetition and metre in poetry. This will serve as an introduction to/ reminder of formal constraint and the Oulipo school of thought.

We will be primarily looking at triolets (repetition), sonnets (strict metre), and lipograms (resource constraint).

Monday 10-Mar-25: Finding Your Voice – Telling Your Story

During this session, we will be looking at how we use poetry to tell stories, talk about relatable events, personal events, and talk about difficult things (with the latter serving as something of an introduction to the following session, which delves deeper).

We will be primarily looking at the List Poem format, talking about storyboarding as a technique, and delving into the tradition of ballads if time permits.

Monday 24-Mar-25: Going Darker

During this session we will be studying how to use poetry to talk about sad, angry, hurtful things, and how to use the artform to vent the darkness. We will discuss why this use of the art is important, and how to take care of yourself and your readers/ audience.

There will be opportunities to write about more difficult topics, and to practise good techniques for keeping yourself and others safe, including discussion about the use of content notes/ trigger warnings, etc.

Monday 7-Apr-25: Editing 101

In this session, we’ll be looking at how to craft a better poem from raw beginnings, including constructive critique methods, and how to develop techniques to trim the fat while leaving the meat of the poem. The following session will be about editing for performance specifically, but we’ll be exploring some common techniques here.

We’ll talk about how to ask for feedback in ways that will help you understand what you need from the poem, and discuss how what other people like about your poem/ poetry may not be what you like (and vice versa).

Monday 21-Apr-25: Editing for Performance

This session sees us explicitly start to ramp up more towards performance, by examining how we can craft a better poem for performance specifically. We’ll be talking about sound and diction, accents, and speed, as well as how to time a poem properly, plus common mistakes and how to avoid them.

Monday 5-May-25: Performance Techniques

Please come to this one prepared to move around, speak aloud, and deliver even a few lines. There will, of course, be plenty of theory to accompany this. We’ll be focusing primarily on how to perform in online spaces, and make the most of the technology, but many of the techniques will pertain to different types of performance.

We’ll be focusing on building individual toolkits around what you need in order to perform your work. No one technique or style will fit everyone. From preparation and warm-up techniques, through stepping into the spotlight and staying there with confidence, using the technology, engaging your audience (and even how to be a good audience member!), to how to deliver a great set, whether it’s three minutes or twenty. And we’ll talk about the pitfalls, and how to avoid and recover from them.

Monday 19-May-25: Bringing it Together

In this final session, you’ll be delivering your own poetry in front of other people! You can deliver work you’ve written in the course of the workshop series, or older work, or something that turned up otherwise.

We’ll also be discussing course outcomes – have we achieved what we set out to achieve at the beginning? Have you achieved what you set out to achieve? What would you like to do next?

You can buy tickets for the whole ten-session course (£150), or buy specific ones for individual sessions (£20 each). There are also limited pay-as-you-feel tickets available for folk who can’t afford the full price. The individual sessions are linked below:

Session 1: Let’s Get Started (13-Jan)

Session 2: Painting with Words (27-Jan)

Session 3: Humorously Enough (10-Feb)

Session 4: Formality (24-Feb)

Session 5: Finding Your Voice – Telling Your Story (10-Mar)

Session 6: Going Darker (24-Mar)

Session 7: Editing 101 (7-Apr)

Session 8: Editing for Performance (21-Apr)

Session 9: Performance Techniques (5-May)

Session 10: Bringing it Together (19-May)

Meet the Tutor

Fay Roberts is a performance poet, a musician, a storyteller, an events host, an award-winning voice actor, Artistic Director for Spoken Word at PBH’s Free Fringe, and an enormous geek. During weekdays, ze persuades people to make lists and say no to shiny things. For every role, there is a different hat, and a spreadsheet to match. Zir first solo show, The Selkie, was shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards, and gained five-star reviews. Zir first full collection, Spectral, came out with Burning Eye in March 2022, and ze describes it as “a kind of poetry concept album, with illustrations”.

Ze has been producing poetry to commission since 2008, and running creative workshops and facilitating community-led writing sessions since 2014 as part of zir arts organisation Allographic, which functions as a platform for marginalised voices whether in performance or print. Ze loves to teach, and to help people get in closer touch with their own creativity and unique voices.

Find out more at http://linktr.ee/fayroberts

Organised by

I am dedicated to making creative development as accessible as possible, in a variety of ways (physical, sensory, financial, neurological, etc.), and I have training and experience in a variety of ways to support this. I am of the firm belief that everyone should be able to access the arts as freely as possible. Please let me know if you have any particular access requirements when booking onto a workshop.

Find out more about me online here.