Bring your best poems, your curiosity, and your willingness to write new work! This course is designed for poets ready to finish their collection with energy and purpose.
Guided by acclaimed poets Dr Nick Makoha and Joelle Taylor, you’ll explore ways to shape, sequence, and refine your poems, while also finding space to create new work and experiment with ideas. Through lively workshops, supportive feedback, and shared readings, you’ll discover how to bring cohesion and confidence to your collection. We will explore different types of collections, from the themed to the dramatic, to find the best frame for your work.
Whether you’re polishing existing poems or diving into fresh material, this course is all about enthusiasm, creative momentum, and the joy of poetry. Join us to read, write, share, and celebrate your work and leave ready to complete your collection with clarity and flair.
What to Expect:
• Supportive daily workshops: Morning sessions designed to deepen your craft and develop your poetic voice
• Expert guidance from your tutors: Acclaimed and prizewinning poets share their insights into poetic craft, the redrafting process and how to build a writing practice
• Personal Feedback: Focused 1:1 sessions with your tutors for constructive feedback on your work
• Inspiration from a range of texts: Learn more about technique from the very best of classic and contemporary poetry
• Writing Exercises: Try out new forms and techniques, refine your style and let your creativity take flight
• Time and space to write: Spend time in an historic building in the middle of the countryside for total immersion
• Community: Share meals and workshops with a supportive group of fellow writers
• At the end of the week: You’ll leave with a new reading list, a full notebook, a sense of direction in your work and a greater understanding of how to create compelling poems that feels authentic to you
*Please use the expandable links below to reveal timings and further details of the course schedule.
Room with a valley view: £995
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: £930
These rooms have low ceilings and extra stairs to climb.
Concessions: Room with a view £696.50
Concessions: Room without a view £651
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.
What your course fee covers:
Tutoring: Four morning group workshops, with inspiring writing exercises to kick-start your creativity, plus two 1:1 tutorials, one with each tutor, focusing on your own work. Our tutors are some of the leading writers at work today, and in addition to formal workshops and tutorials you will share meals with them and have opportunities for more casual conversation. During evening readings, you’ll hear your tutors – and a guest speaker on Wednesday evening – share their work and answer your questions, from the secrets of their craft to the practicalities of life as a writer.
Your accommodation: A week an 18th-century millowner’s house in West Yorkshire, set in 20 acres of steep woodland with breathtaking views to the valley below.
All meals: We hand over our well-stocked and welcoming kitchen to you, offering a fresh, tasty seasonal menu prepared from local ingredients where possible (with dietary requests catered for), as well as a constant supply of coffees, teas, and home-baked cakes throughout your stay.
Time and space to write: an opportunity to step away from the distractions of everyday life and focus solely on your creativity.
A community of writers: our writing weeks have a relaxed and sociable atmosphere and offer the perfect opportunity to meet like-minded people. Many of the writers who attend our residentials stay in touch and continue to share work and support one another’s writing journeys – sometimes even decades later.
Support for our charitable activity: Arvon is a charity, and each year over 40 of our courses are with vulnerable groups and schools, from young people who have experienced bullying to adults recovering from an addiction. Your course fee helps to support groups who would otherwise not have the opportunity to access our transformational courses.
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.
Joelle Taylor
Nick Makoha
Roger Robinson
