Exploring Form and Freedom with Liz McSkeane

Course Summary

This six-week course is designed for writers who already have some experience of poetry and want to take the next step in developing their craft. We will spend part of the session on workshopping poems which participants are currently developing and also explore how poetic form and free verse can work together: how rhythm, image, and structure can shape meaning and release creative energy.

Through a mix of guided reading, discussion and workshop practice, you’ll experiment with both traditional and contemporary forms, finding freedom through form, and form through freedom. By the end of the course, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how your poems work, and how to make them sing.

Course Outline

Session 1: The Music of the Line: Rhythm, Sound and Free Verse Foundations

Explore how the line can sing, pause, and breathe. We’ll experiment with rhythm, sound, and cadence, discovering how free verse creates structure through breath, syntax, and sonic texture rather than rhyme or metre.

Session 2: Image, Metaphor and the Craft of Free Verse

Delve into the power of precise images and fresh metaphors. You’ll learn how to use detail, sensory language, and image sequences to build poems that resonate and linger.

Session 3: Form as Invention: Pantoum, Ghazal, Golden Shovel etc

Play with both traditional and contemporary forms, from interlocking pantoums and refrain-driven ghazals to inventive forms like the Golden Shovel. Experimenting with repetition, pattern, and constraint reveals new ways for your voice to emerge.

Session 4: Voice, Persona and Tone

Discover how the speaker’s voice shapes a poem’s impact. We’ll explore persona, perspective, and tonal shifts, helping you experiment with mood, character, and emotional resonance.

Session 5: Revision and Building the Poem

Focus on shaping and refining your work. Through cutting, rearranging, and editing, you’ll see how poems gain energy, clarity, and emotional arc, turning drafts into polished, living pieces.

Session 6: Sequence, Reading and Reflection

Bring your work together and hear it aloud. We’ll explore how poems interact in sequence, practise reading confidently, and reflect on the creative journey you’ve taken during the course.

Course Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will:

1. Approach free verse as structured freedom.
2. Develop sensitivity to sound, texture and the line.
3. Gain confidence in reading and critiquing the work of your peers.
4. Explore the use of image as structure.
5. Explore the use of sound as structure.
6. Adapt traditional and contemporary poetic forms for your own purposes.
7. Enhance tone and poetic voice.
8. Explore different approaches to the architecture and editing of a poem.
9. Practise reading your work aloud.

Liz McSkeane is a writer and publisher. She has four collections of poetry, two novels and one collection of short stories In 1999 she was overall winner of the Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year Award for her poetry. Her first novel Canticle was joint winner in the 2016 Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair. Her second novel, Aftershock, was published in October, 2025. Liz is founder and Director of Turas Press.

Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email info@irishwriterscentre.ie.