WORKSHOPS

Toby is a poetry and creative writing tutor at City Lit and is the founder of verse, a queer-led creative writing salon delivering online and in-person writing courses. An experienced workshop facilitator, Toby's pedagogy is based on the principle that poetry has the ability to inspire and empower, no matter what background or level of experience participants have, and that poetry can be a space to learn technique that can be applied to other forms of writing. Toby has worked with organisations including National Trust, Financial Times, Roundhouse and NHS Leicestershire to devise and deliver writing workshops for staff and stakeholders.

Courses/workshops.

Toby devises and delivers tailored writing courses of varying length for all abilities, from one off workshops to recurring 12 week courses.

At City Lit Toby teachers courses including Ways into Poetry, Developing your Poems, Advanced Poetry Workshop, Queer Poetics, Performance and Poetry. He covers a wide range of topics including freewriting and mindfulness, overcoming writer's block, taking risks, sounding like yourself, how to utilise metaphor and imagery, editing drafts into poems, lying your way to the truth and many more.

Toby has worked with many companies to deliver workshops for staff development.

Workshop examples include Write Like a Poet for law firm Taylor Wessing, Freewriting and Mindfulness at Financial Times, Approaches to poetry for those who hate it for teachers across London through the Diana Trust.

Toby offers mentoring to individuals and groups looking to work on editing, writing technique and creative development.

Coaching/mentoring.

Corporate/CPD.

“Toby made this learning experience so much better than I could have hoped for. I came into the course having written very few poems and my confidence was incredibly low before doing this course . Now I feel that I not only can do more, but that I actively want to.”

City Lit student

“Every week was different, inspiring and centring. Exceptional teaching - I feel very inspired and lucky to have been part of this group.”

verse workshop attendee