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
- 4.5 Instructor Rating
- 216 Reviews
- 2,244 Students
- 2 Courses
Gwyneth’s career has shifted between technology and creativity, and through a number of reincarnations, until her current position as co-owner and director of Tantamount creative agency. Here, she works with businesses, charities and independent professionals on projects that draw together the threads of brand storytelling, technology and publishing.
Gwyneth has written in many genres over the years and is a best-selling children’s author, an award-winning poet, and a popular workshop facilitator. Her personal creativity inclines to poetry and non-fiction in English and Spanish; she loves the taste of words and the multi-layered aspects of language and thought revealed through translation and poetry. Her creative writings explore the borderlands between writer and narrator, between translation and creation, and between memoir and invention.
Gwyneth was Poetry Coordinator and Digital Advisor to the SWWJ, the UK's oldest professional organisation for women writers, and organiser of the UK Poetry Society’s “Stanza” group in Madrid, Spain. She has performed her poetry at TEDx Leamington Spa and Art in the Park and hosted a monthly open mic for music and spoken word. She is member of the Society of Authors and one of the team behind the South Warwickshire Literary Festival.
On the commercial side, she specialises in copywriting in the fields of lifestyle, travel and technology, as well as helping businesses and professionals to find their own voices in a sometimes baffling world of words. This includes mentoring business experts on their journey to publication through her "From Authority to Authorship" programme.
You can find out more about Gwyneth on 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.