Preparing your Poetry for Publication with Jessica Traynor

Workshop Level: Intermediate/ Advanced

Workshop Summary:

This one-day course will focus on editing techniques, approaches to literary journals and magazines, and techniques to shape poems into a pamphlet or collection.

Workshop Outline:

Poets should be prepared to bring and share one poem from their pamphlet or collection in development, alongside a short (max. 100 word) blurb describing their work. As a group, we’ll offer feedback on the poem in question, explore a number of editing techniques for both individual and groupings of poems, and pointers towards building up a publication record.

Course Outcomes:

Participants will come away with a new sense of confidence and direction in their ability to edit and shape their work, and a personal plan for next steps towards publication.

Bio:

Jessica Traynor is a poet, and poetry editor at Banshee.

Her third collection Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe, 2022) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, an Irish Times book of the year, a Guardian Best Read of 2022, and was shortlisted for the Yeats Society/ Irish Independent Poetry Prize.

Awards include the Tundish Award from Field Day, and the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry.

New Arcana (Bloodaxe Books) was published in 2025.