The people have spoken – classes for winter 2026

I set up a poll to find out what my prospective students were most interested in me offering during the winter, complete with lots of options and a chance to rank things. And yes indeed, the people spoke. And what they’ve said is a resounding:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Essentially, the most popular answer – across all permutations – was a decisive and terribly helpful: You decide, Jo!

Interestingly, a four session Examining the Ockhams was not high up on many people’s preferences. Although quite a few were moderately interested in a one-off look at Erik Kennedy’s Sick Power Trip. And while individual anthologies from the Odyssey option also got fairly strong support (which is good, as I need to teach them to be able to claim them against my taxes) Odyssey by Anthology as a four-session block got less support. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, given that the most popular choice for the first course (other than Anything) was Four books, four sessions, that’s what we’ll be doing – each class will be a different single poetry book, selected from my stash. What those will be, exactly, is something I have yet to determine, but it may well include a book by a certain John Burnside, and maybe one by a moustachioed gentleman with the initials EK … Who knows!

The second set of workshops will be three stand-alone classes looking at each of the three overseas anthologies I was lining up as possibles for Odyssey – Best American, Best Canadian, and The Forward Book (UK), with a discount for people who sign up for all three. Because this is what happens when you leave it to me to decide! Unfortunately they’ll only be available as in-person classes on the Sunday mornings (no Zoom) as the third term at Hagley Writers’ Institute will be underway, and they pay me more.

I definitely intend to run sessions on line breaks, perhaps later in the year, maybe earlier, dunno. As always, the issue is in finding a room and managing to get enough people to cover the costs and pay me something for my time. So if that’s one you’re waiting for, watch this space … and possibly leave a comment to that effect.

Now I’d better set up the enrolment form again, hadn’t I?

And hadn’t you better head across there and enrol?