From 2020-21, I Am Loud Productions ran a project entitled Return to Form exploring different poetic forms, supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland. I organised the educational component of this project, which entailed creating five free digital workshops explaining these forms—golden shovel, univocal, Shakespearean sonnet, sestina, and concrete—and leading the participant step-by-step through how to use them. The workshops are designed to be accessible to ages 14+ with any level of experience in writing poetry. Each workshop is freely accessible through this playlist on our YouTube channel and fully closed captioned.

Here’s a brief trailer explaining how the workshops work and what you need to take part:

 

You can take all of the workshops through this playlist on our YouTube channel. I’ve also embedded them below. Enjoy!

 

Our first Return to Form workshop, on golden shovels:

 

Our second workshop, on Shakespearean sonnets:

 

Our third workshop, on univocal poetry:

 

Our fourth workshop, on concrete poetry:

 

Our fifth and final workshop in the series, on the sestina:

 

And here’s the pilot workshop on erasure poetry that we released earlier in 2020: