If you have an Instagram account and post photos of books, like photos of books, or follow people who like or post about books, chances are that you’ve been bombarded with ads for the BBC Maestro course Writing Poetry with Carol Ann Duffy. I asked a few of my female friends and all of them had seen the course advertised and all of them were tempted. As far as I know, I’m the only one who bit the bullet and bought the course. Fools and their money…
I completed the course over the month of December. By completed, I mean I watched all the videos, made extensive notes, and looked through the accompanying PDF.
Writing Poetry with Carol Ann Duffy focuses less on the specifics of poetry and more on the different entry points to start your creative writing journey. If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class of any substance, you probably have worked through similar course material, received similar advice, and complete similar exercises. If you’ve never taken a creative writing class, this is as good as it gets. If you follow her suggestions and complete the exercises, you’ll get as far as you can with help. Everything else is up to you.
While the manual defines common poetic structures, Duffy herself doesn’t focus on the technical aspects of poetry. The main constraint that she employs on her own poems, she tells us, involves the line numbers per stanza. She maintains the same number of lines per stanza throughout her poems to define the size of her canvas.
Depending on where you’re at, this course might be for you.