Poetry and Copywriting: a shared approach
What you'll learn
- At the end of the course, you will recognise the kinship between poetry and copywriting.
- You will discover some of the language and text techniques that can be useful to both genres.
- You will see how word-choice and visual presentation can influence the emotions and understanding of the reader of a text.
- You will become more aware of the power behind the texts you come across every day.
Requirements
- Students should be interested in poetry and/or language.
- No previous academic study or qualifications are required.
- Students should have at least an intermediate level of English.
Description
Discover the crossover between poetry and copywriting and how the same techniques can be used in both disciplines.
At first sight, poetry and marketing copy would seem to be two entirely different writing genres: on the one hand, poetry is an art - one of the highest literary forms - while the commercial nature of marketing materials places copywriting firmly at the other end of the scale.
This brief course aims to show that there is no such dichotomy: both copywriting and poetry aim to evoke an emotional response and to influence behaviour or opinion.
The same techniques that poets use to convey their message and meaning and to produce the desired - and often subconscious - reaction in their audience can also be used in marketing materials to affect and influence the potential client. But because such tools as metre and layout are so closely associated with the discipline of poetry, their power is not always recognised or fully exploited by the copywriter.
Based on the premise that "words are not enough", we’ll look closely at how literal meaning, word-associations and cultural connotations, sound, metre, line breaks and layout are all used in careful combination by the poet to create different effects and to influence the reader's mood and response.
Understanding these techniques will draw attention to some of the subliminal effects produced by the marketing copy we encounter each day and make us more aware of the effects we create when producing our own business literature.
Whether you’re a poet who hopes to apply your skills to a more lucrative genre, or a copywriter who is looking for a new perspective on your discipline, this course will offer insights into ways to expand your writing repertoire.
Who this course is for:
- Poets and other creative writers, particularly those who are interested in developing their skills as copywriters.
- Copywriters who would like to get a new perspective on their craft.
- Anyone who would like to understand more about language techniques used in marketing and how persuasive texts are crafted.
Instructor
- 4.4 Instructor Rating
- 202 Reviews
- 2,168 Students
- 2 Courses
Award-winning poet, writer, translator and businesswoman, with a career spanning IT, teaching, design and publishing, Gwyneth specialises in copy writing and transcreation, particularly in the fields of lifestyle, travel and technology.
As joint owner of the UK creative agency and publishing house Tantamount, Gwyneth works with businesses, educators and freelance creatives on projects that draw together the threads of publishing, design, technology and training.
As a writer, she is fascinated by the multi-layered aspects of language revealed through translation and poetry, and her creative writings explore the borderlands between writer and narrator, between translation and creation, and between memoir and invention.
Over the years, Gwyneth has organised and been an active member of a number of writers' groups. She is Digital Advisor to the SWWJ, the UK's oldest professional organisation for women writers, for whom she has run workshops and courses in subjects including creative writing, translation, and technology for writers. As well as running workshops, she was poet in residence for TEDx Leamington Spa in 2017 and is a regular at open mikes and on local radio.
You can find out more about Gwyneth at her website, where you'll find information about her books (available from Amazon), as well as links to her personal blog and some of her other writing activities.