This is our 8-week entry-level flagship course for poetry. Online only. This workshop will hone your skills as a poet and a performer. Most importantly, our course will ensure that you appreciate poetry and the power of carefully whittled language, even more than you perhaps already do.

Our 8 week poetry workshop will hone your skills as a poet and a performer.
Most importantly, our course will ensure that you appreciate poetry and the power of carefully whittled language, even more than you perhaps already do.
You will get to travel through the ages and across countries with our poetry workshop.
You will study poems from Shakespeare to Allen Ginsberg to Mirza Ghalib to Bob Dylan.
You will use poetry as a vehicle to discover the best ways to express your opinions on love, politics, your current diet, and anything you might find incomprehensible in the real world.
Did we mention that you will be writing a lot of your poems? You will do a range of writing exercises, mimic established writers but also break poetic rules. By the end of the course, you should have your own portfolio of poems.
You will be required to share your own writing and give constructive criticism to other writers in the workshop. 
Not only that, you will be expected to read out some of your poems crafted to perfection during the workshop, to a public audience in Bangalore at an event that culminates your poetry workshop. So the graduation day of this workshop (Week 8) will end in a poetry reading. 
Being a community intensive course, we don't take more than 8 students in a batch. But, we do need a minimum of three students to make a batch. And the organic community that BWW has created so far, will continue to inspire your writing long after the course is over. 

Who is it targeted at?
The study and writing of poetry is for everyone who is interested in writing poetry. You could be an academic or an engineer, a CEO, or a home maker.
This workshop is designed for beginners and intermediate levels, and covers all the basics. It also goes over complex poetic forms.
There is an application process that exists only so we know you are really serious, and to understand your creative competency. Please, don’t let it alarm you. Please apply! 

What is expected from the participants?
An open mind, a sense of humour and adventure, a tad bit of wit, an eye for detail, and an appreciation of the English language. An interest to learn and a willingness to get out of their comfort zone will ensure that you will have a lot of fun in the workshop. 

You will need to bond and build a community of writers within the city.

Please note, the course is moderately rigorous. You will be writing and reading a considerable amount of poetry.

What are the takeaways for the participants?
This workshop is meant to give you an academic grounding in poetry, to inspire you to write great poems, and to encourage you to examine your life through the medium of poetry. 
By the end of this workshop, you will walk away armed with a portfolio of poems and a suitcase of literary knowledge.

Being a course that ends in a performance, we will also be working with you on your reading and presentation skills.

What is the methodology?
Each week, there will be two peer poems for the class to read and critique. We believe in the workshop method of giving and receiving constructive feedback. We also analyse published poems, and create a community that critiques and appreciates these works, imbibing the best of their analysis into their own writing. 
At the end of the workshop, you will submit a portfolio of the poems you’ve written and edited over the 8 sessions.

What is the duration?
8 weeks. 
That is, 8 Sundays for 3 hours (for a total of 24 hours over 8 weeks).
 
What is the cost?
INR 24,000 including GST at 18%.

Recommended Reading:
Ars Poetica (Essay) by Horace
Adam’s Curse by W B Yeats
A Flower Garden at Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire by William Wordsworth
A Jewish Family in A Small Valley Opposite St. Goar, Upon the Rhine by William Wordsworth
A Little Girl Lost by William Blake
A Party of Lovers by John Keats
A River by A. K Ramanujan
Advice to a Young Man (from Hamlet) by William Shakespeare
Ah Sunflower by William Blake
An Education on Invention by Manoel de Barros
An Extempore by John Keats
Arrow and the Song by William Wordsworth
At the Bus Stop by Dr. Tapan Kumar
Auguries of Innocence by William Blake
Ave Maria by Frank O’Hara
Character of a Happy Life by Henry Wotton
Coloured Toys by Rabindranath Tagore
Daddy by Sylvia Plath
Draupadi Asks by Nishtha Gautam
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
Grandfather by Jayantha Mahapatra
Happiest Moment by Lydia Davis
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
I Don’t Like Flowers by Anna Akhmatova
I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman
If by Rudyard Kipling
If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins
Invictus by William Ernesy Henley
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Jewish Wedding in Bombay by Nissim Ezekiel
Killing Flies by Michael Dickman
Letter From a Mughal Emperor, 2006 by Jeet Thayil
Lost Things by Lydia Davis
Medusa by C. K Williams
Men by Maya Angelou
Morning Song by Sylvia Plath
Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
Ode to Melancholy by John Keats
Ode to Socks by Pablo Neruda
O Me! O life! by Walt Whitman
Our Casuarina Tree by Toru Dutt
Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
Poem for the Breasts by Sharon Olds
Sevenling Poems by Anna Akhmatova 
Soap by Nissim Ezekiel
Sonnet 18/73 by Shakespeare
Sonnet on Chillon by George Gordon Byron
The Day Lady Died by Frank O’Hara
The Elements of Composition by A K Ramanujan
The Indian Way by Jayanta Mahapatra
The Jaguar by Ted Hughes
The Looking Glass by Kamala Das
The Old Dictionary by Lydia Davis
The Patriot by Nissim Ezekiel
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
The Shield of Achilles by W H Auden
The Wasteland by T S Eliot
The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin
This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin
To Baudelaire by Jeet Thayil
To the Welsh Critic Who Doesn't Find Me Identifiably Indian by Arundhathi Subramaniam
Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright by William Blake
Walking Around by Pablo Neruda
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent by John Milton
When I Am An Old Woman by Jenny Joseph
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman
Where the Mind is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Please Note: It's not necessary for you to have read all these poems.
But knowing a few of them will ensure you enjoy the workshop that much more.