If you walk into a bookshop, the poetry section might be relatively small compared to biographies, self-help, recipe books, humour, and will certainly be dwarved by the novels section.  But within the different styles of poetry lie biography, science, self-help, stories, autobiography, and non-fiction.  

We'll let you into a secret.  Here at With Words, although we like a great deal of poetry, we don't indiscriminately, as individuals, love it all.  Just as we like film, yet wouldn't pay to see some, while we'd queue round the block for others.  It's a taste and preference thing.  

So if comic poetry might amuse you, or science poetry might fascinate you, but self-reflective stuff leaves you cold, it could still be worth a flick through the shelves.

Here are a few brief ideas for the kind of poetry you might like if you have specific interests:

FAIRY-TALES

If you hanker for Cinderella or Snow White, but need it delivered in a more grown-up form, then you might like:

xxx

?

Robert Pinksky

EARTH SCIENCES

If you enjoy the turning of the earth, and even fancy you can feel it, then Jean Sprackland will help you indulge your passion / help you feel it.

Jean Sprackland

We'll change this section from time to time.

DOGS

John Hegley

EPIC STORIES

A Double Sorrow

COURSES (also in another learning section?) 

With Words doesn't run courses specifically on longform poetry, except through other organisations.  For instance, Karen Hoy will be tutoring an online course for the New-York based The Rooster Moans Poetry Collective in November 2014.  Alan Summers is just finishing leading a course with The Rooster Moans on the Japanese poetry and prose form Haibun.

You can find out more about The Rooster Moans online poetry courses here.  

We also recommend The Poetry School, a London-based organisation with an excellent reputation, for whom Alan Summers has previously taught classes.  

Our other favourite course provider is The Arvon Foundation, who run residential writing courses at their UK properties.