In January 2015 I took over a module on ‘modern’ poetry at Kingston University, when I began teaching there. Now, in February 2020, I’m working with my sixth set of students. The course is without doubt my biggest pedagogical achievement. It’s really honed and specialised, and I change it every year, allow huge room for improvisation. I base it around methods fundamentally. Ways of writing contemporary poetry, tools. I’ll teach constraint writing and do case studies on oulipo. Ideas around conscious / unconscious writing with surrealism. Sound, visual, concrete, performance, video, electronic, kinetic, sculptural poetry etc… Then I try to respond to those who are in the room, lucky as I am to be able to control the numbers and have a dozen or under people involved. I try to open spaces for them to find their own subjects, for the methods to just reveal what is most original and idiosyncratic about their interests and personalities. Then I’m very wary of theory, and talk concepts and ideas and philosophy only when it seems to support the methods / subjects people are naturally bringing. So every year of the six has been so different, but I am proper proud of some of the amazing poets who have come from the course. This picture here shows us doing asemic / pansemic writing techniques in lesson.