Into the Gaps: Folklore as a Vehicle for Poetry

Once upon a poem, making your own mythologies poetic as folk.

Folklore winks at history and vanishes into myth, re-appears as fairytale; it’s hearsay, legend, tall tale and you never guess what my grandad used to say. Now, more so than ever, folklore is being dug up and spitshined, re-mixed and retold, spun into folk horror, fantasy, retelling and poem. Over the course of five fortnightly sessions Kym Deyn will guide you into the unreal-world of folklore, finding it, exploring it and using it as the basis for poems and sequences.

You will learn to ‘write into the gaps’ of folklore, not simply reworking what’s there, but embellishing and building. We will dive into modern retellings of all kinds, taking inspiration from novelists like Zoe Gilbert, as well as poets such as Jacob Polley and Fiona Benson. This course offers an overview of this rich tradition and gives you the tools you need to develop your own folkloric poems.

5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks, starting 2 October 2026. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.