Residential Arvon Plus: Poetry

Sometimes finding inspiration isn’t the biggest challenge: it’s moulding your poems into the best shape, the best form, the best sequence or collection once you have the raw material. What makes a great poem? How do you take your work from promise to a publishable draft? How do you know when a poem or pamphlet or book is ‘finished’?

Join acclaimed poet, critic and Jonathan Cape editor Declan Ryan and award-winning author and creative writing Professor Helen Mort for a course designed to help you polish existing poems, structure work-in-progress and consider your audience.

You’ll read a diverse range of poets, engage in creative discussions and try exercises designed to develop your style and voice. You’ll examine how other writers have approached drafting and redrafting, think about the editorial relationship and learn about the difference between tweaking a draft and radically rewriting. You’ll look at how can theme, form and content reinforce one another, and how to know if a stanza is ‘throat-clearing’ or if you’ve bailed out too early. You’ll also learn how to navigate advice and feedback, from others and from your own inner critic. Through peer feedback and close reading, you’ll emerge with a clearer sense of direction for your work and an enhanced sense of how to push your poems further, from draft to completion.

And then, spend the extra days not usually granted on an Arvon course putting all of that learning into practice.

*Please use the expandable links below to reveal timings and further details of the course schedule.

Room with a valley view: £1500
Rooms in this price band have a single or double bed, and most are on the first or ground floor. One room in this price band is in the attic but has a valley view.

Attic room without a valley view: £1250
These rooms have low ceilings and extra stairs to climb.

Concessions: Room with a view: £1050

Concessions: Room without a view: £875

As part of our effort to increase participation in the arts, we offer limited concessionary places at a 30% reduction. You can select this option at checkout if available.

Physical access at Lumb Bank:

The upper floor of the barn is accessible by lift, and the ground floor is level access or ramped. There is an accessible toilet on the ground floor. Lumb Bank’s main building is accessible for wheelchair users, but the access to the house itself is down a steep country lane, and the initial part of the driveway is bumpy and uneven. If you are coming on a course and require assistance to enter the building or are a wheelchair user please contact us on access@arvon.org or rozie.kelly@arvon.org so we can meet you on arrival and guide any vehicles in. If you need to park onsite please contact us to arrange this in advance (one space available per course).

Please see our access page for general access information for residential courses.

Our grants scheme may be able to cover a portion of your course fees. Disability costs and additional living/support costs are taken into account when considering your grant application. You may also be entitled to concession pricing on selected courses.

If you have any questions or concerns and want to chat to a member of staff prior to booking please contact us on access@arvon.org

The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre, Lumb Bank is an 18th-century millowner’s house in West Yorkshire, which once belonged to Ted Hughes. It’s set in 20 acres of steep woodland with breathtaking views to the valley below.

You’ll find many quiet places to write in the house and garden – and a well-stocked library. All rooms are single occupancy, and bathrooms are shared.

All your meals are provided, locally and sustainably sourced wherever possible. Help yourself to breakfast, our team will prepare lunch, and dinner is prepared in groups each evening using the delicious recipes and ingredients provided.

Explore the Pennine landscape of woods and rivers, weavers’ cottages, packhorse trails and ruins of old mills. It is half a mile from the historic village of Heptonstall and two miles from Hebden Bridge.

See here for more information on Lumb Bank.