Creative Writing Course: Reading & Writing Lyric Poetry

Learn how to read and write poetry with our writing courses in Sydney!

From the outcries of praise and lament in the Bible to the musical expressions of delight and despair in the songs of Taylor Swift, lyric poetry been helping humanity turn emotional outbursts into art for centuries. In this course, we’ll look at poems that use the lyric ‘I’ to make public declarations of love, sadness, anger, joy, bewilderment, and more – while analysing how poetic modalities can amplify personal experiences to make them universal.

This course is for anyone who’s interested in poetry. You will deepen your understanding of significant historical poetic movements, and gain insight into why poetry matters. In this hands-on approach, we’ll read and discuss a range of different lyric poems, with a focus on Australia’s contribution to the lyric tradition.

Creative prompts will be given at the end of every lesson so you can experiment with writing your own poetry. There will be opportunities for you to share your original work, but please note that the aim of each class is to deepen your appreciation for poetry and inspire your creativity, rather than to subject your early drafts to excessive critical scrutiny.   

Learning outcomes

By the end of this poetry course, you should be able to:

• Be a better reader of poetry, with a more nuanced understanding of how poems 'speak', 'sing', and generate meaning
• Identify the key differences between formal poetry and free verse
• Understand more about the history of lyric poetry in Australia, and discover what contemporary lyric poets are currently doing with the form
• Generate ideas for poems and have fun experimenting with writing exercises
• Read drafts of your own work to a supportive audience

Course content

What will be covered in this poetry course?

• Poetry as song: the musical history of lyric poetry
• Fun with form: sonnets, haikus, pantoums, villanelles, and more
• Sound and vision: how poetry combines visual and sonic elements to create power and magic
• Poetry as a ‘machine to think with’: poetry as a philosophical tool
• The purpose of poetry in the contemporary world: who reads it? Where is it published? How can I contribute?

Intended audience

Who is this poetry course for?

This course is for writers of any level. 

Course materials

What to bring to class

• A pen and notebook (or device for writing)
• Any example of a poem or song lyric that you particularly enjoy and would like to share with the class