Save on bundle registration!

You can either register for one course, or save by registering for more:

• Save 10% on registering for any two Hyperfocus courses with code HYPER2 at checkout,

• Save 15% on any three with code HYPER3, or

• Save 20% off all four courses with code HYPER4.

*We understand the financial constraints many are currently faced with, so we have introduced the option to pay in instalments, via Klarna or PayPal Pay in 3, to help spread out costs. 

Read more below for details of available courses. If you are unable to attend the courses but don’t want to miss out, we are pleased to offer an asynchronous Playback Recording-Only option.

A Perfect Gift for Poets

As the festive season approaches, show the poet in your life that you know their preoccupations by registering them for one or more of our Hyperfocus courses around a theme that interests them.

Just tell us when prompted after clicking ‘Register Now’ that you’re registering as a gift and we’ll send you a physical gift card, and register the recipient for the course. Purchase confirmation will be sent to your customer email address and no course information emails will be sent to recipients prior to 26 December 2025!

Grief - January 2026

6-27 JANUARY 2026
TUTORS: PASCALE PETIT, EMILY BERRY
WORKSHOPS: TUES 7-9PM UK

Consider the different ways poems can help get between the feelings of grief and loss and look at how to ensure a poem remains artful while also true to its emotional life and sensibility. Both Emily Berry and Pascale Petit have written extensively on the theme of grief using metaphor, allegory and anecdote and will be guiding poets through a range of tips and prompts aimed at enhancing their skillset and thinking around the kind of poetry they want to write.

Parents - February 2026

3–24 FEBRUARY 2026
TUTORS: CAROLINE BIRD, JACK UNDERWOOD
WORKSHOPS: TUES 7-9PM UK

How do you write about a problematic parent(s)? How best could you navigate a complex upbringing? How do you handle the sheer awe and panic of being a new parent? How do you write about the loss of a parent? In this second segment of Hyperfocus, join poets Caroline Bird and Jack Underwood as they look at ways we can write poems that draw from the multilayered experiences of having parents and being a parent.

Eros - March 2026

3–24 MARCH 2026
TUTORS: KIM ADDONIZIO, OLUWASEUN OLAYIWOLA
WORKSHOPS: TUES 7-9PM UK

Love, desire, lust, eros and longing are all part of March’s Hyperfocus. Participants will be looking at what makes an erotic poem… erotic. How does one write erotica without sounding crass or twee, how can we express notions of longing or desire for another person and not make the poem feel like it's over-reaching or performative and if we are to write sex how much does that involve the body. How do sexuality, ability and gender impact the way we write into these themes?

Resistance - April 2026

7–28 APRIL 2026
TUTORS: JOELLE TAYLOR, ANTHONY ANAXAGOROU
WORKSHOPS: TUES 7-9PM UK

Writing poems that talk truth to power or address the state of the nation can often be tricky to navigate. Either a poem is so direct it ends up feeling didactic or it's so subtle it doesn't have the push and bite it needs to make its case.

Over the course of the four weeks participants will explore what it means to write a poem that is concerned with the world, injustice, oppression, trauma and witness.

Pascale Petit’s ninth poetry collection, Beast, published by Bloodaxe in 2025, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her novel, My Hummingbird Father, was published by Salt in 2024. She has published nine poetry collections, four of which were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Mama Amazonica won the RSL Ondaatje, and Laurel prizes. Her eighth, Tiger Girl, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and Wales Book of the Year.

Emily Berry is is the author of three books of poems published by Faber & Faber: Dear Boy (2013), Stranger, Baby (2017) and Unexhausted Time (2022). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she edited The Poetry Review between 2017 and 2022 and is now editor-in-chief of the bedtime stories app Sleep Worlds.

Caroline Bird is a poet and playwright. Her sixth collection, The Air Year, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020 and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Costa Prize. Her fifth collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001 and the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010. She was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics. As a playwright, Bird has been shortlisted for the George Devine Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her Selected Poems, Rookie, was published in May 2022.

Jack Underwood is a poet, writer and critic. He is author of Happiness (Faber 2015) Solo for Mascha Voice (Test Centre, 2018) and A Year in the New Life (Faber 2021). His debut work of non-fiction, NOT EVEN THIS, was published by Corsair in 2021, exploring parallels between quantum physics, black hole science, cyborgism, and the philosophies of language and knowledge and poetics, all through the lens of new parenthood. He has collaborated widely with composers and artists, and his work has been published internationally and in translation. He is co-presenter and curator of the Faber Poetry Podcast and is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, and is currently working on a collection of short fiction.

Kim Addonizio  is the author of nine poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry, The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. She has received fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay, and her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist in poetry. Her latest poetry collection is Exit Opera, from W.W. Norton. She teaches poetry workshops on Zoom from Oakland, CA and is online at https://www.kimaddonizio.com

Oluwaseun (Seun) Olayiwola is a poet, critic, choreographer and performer based in London. His creative and critical work has been published in: the Guardian, The Poetry Review, PN Review, Oxford Poetry, the Telegraph, the TLS and elsewhere. His debut collection, Strange Beach, was published in 2025 by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and Soft Skull Press (US). Strange Beach was PBS Special Commendation and winner of an Eric Gregory Award.

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co- curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet was published by Riverrun in 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Her most recent collection, Maryville, was published by Bloomsbury in November 2025.

Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist and publisher. His third collection, Heritage Aesthetics published with Granta Poetry in 2022, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award. It was listed as one of New Statesman’s top books of 2022. His second collection, After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year. In 2020 he published How To Write It with Merky Books; a practical guide fused with tips and memoir looking at the politics of writing as well as the craft of poetry and fiction along with the wider publishing industry. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press. He is the editor-in-chief of Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection and the founder and curator of WriteBack, a quarterly literary series held at the British Library In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow at the University of Roehampton. In 2023 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.