In a world of flooding inboxes, instant messages and video calls, nothing compares to the feeling of writing a letter. Unlike the immediacy of emails or calls, with letters, one reflects on what they want to say to someone and takes the time to share their thoughts and experiences with them.

From March to August 2024, the Oxford Poetry Library is running the Letterbox Poetry workshop series on the 2nd Sunday of each month from 11 to 12.30 PM UK time (4.30 to 6 PM India time).

The workshop will explore the process of writing letters as a way to create poems. It will encourage participants to write about places, people, ideas and objects using letters as a medium of expression. The workshop is for readers of poetry, people who share a love for letters, beginners and experienced writers and anyone else in between or beyond.

During the workshop, participants will find how they can use the letter writing process to build their own narratives and understand themselves and those around them a little better. They will work on writing prompts, read famous epistolary poems and excerpts from epistolary novels and have the option to be paired with another participant to have a mini letter-writing exchange through the course of the workshop!

For those interested in presenting their poems to a wider audience can take part in the Workshop Showcase in which a few handpicked poems will be spotlighted on the Oxford Poetry Library’s social media pages.

The sessions are suitable for anyone over the age of 16. While each session will cover different writing themes and activities, one could enrol for all six sessions or any session or sessions they prefer. Each session is priced at £5, and participants also have the option to opt from a sliding ticket price range of £2-£10 based on their means.

Please email us at [email protected] if you have any questions about the workshop series.

About the facilitator: Prarthana Banikya is a poet and editor with over 12 years of experience in the learning design industry. Her writings, photographs and other work have appeared in Scroll, Homegrown, Mid-Day, Architectural Digest, Asia Writes, Feminism India, Namnai and Stories of the Nature of Cities, among others. She is the recipient of the 2018 Orange Flower Award for poetry and the founder and editor of The Little Journal of Northeast India. She has most recently conducted the Stillness in Words poetry workshop for the Oxford Poetry Library.