Editing Your Poetry with Ella Jeffery

Learn how to revise and refine your writing to produce polished, focused poems for publication.

Getting ideas on the page is only part of the process. Editing is invisible but essential work for a poet: this workshop will help poets with an existing poetry practice to approach their work with fresh eyes. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to edit your poetry, developing rough ideas and drafts into finely-tuned poems ready to submit to publications and poetry competitions. Through a series of practical exercises and examples, you’ll learn how to bring focus and precision to your poems, and develop the skills to edit and refine poems of any style or form.

Learning outcomes

As part of this workshop, you will:

• Understand the key principles of poetry editing

• Learn to bring concision and clarity to lines of poetry

• Identify and reflect on strategies for developing new poetry.

Format

This is an online workshop with a focus on writing craft; it will be hosted via Zoom. This workshop is suitable for writers of all levels and writing backgrounds.

Complimentary access to this workshop is available to all 2024 Queensland Poetry Awards entrants (including the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, Val Vallis Award, Oodgeroo Noonuccal Prize and XYZ Prize) – select the free Awards Entrant Admission ticket type (ensure your registration details match those of your entry). Other Queensland Writers Centre members and the public may attend with a paid ticket.

About Ella

Ella Jeffery is a writer, editor, critic and academic. Her debut collection, Dead Bolt, won the Anne Elder Award and the Puncher & Wattmann Prize for a First book of Poems, and was shortlisted for the Dame Mary Gilmore Award. Her poems have been published in journals and anthologies including Meanjin, Griffith Review, HEAT, Island, and Best Australian Poems. She is the recipient of fellowships including a Red Room Poetry Fellowship, a Queensland Writers Fellowship and a Mick Dark Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at Griffith University.

For more information about Queensland Writers Centre’s Program of Events and answers to FAQs, please visit: www.queenslandwriters.org.au/program-info