An online workshop exploring the strengths and nuances of written and spoken word poems.
Saturday 20 June 2026 2.00pm to 3.30pm on Zoom
Join us for an online poetry workshop to examine:
- How to capture poetically jarring moments in everyday settings, and their consequences and aftershocks
- How rhythm, pauses, inflexion and stress all shape meaning when poems are read aloud
- How linguistic influences and patterns enrich poems, as exemplified by poets like Benjamin Zephaniah
The workshop will also provide information on the 2026 Black in White Poetry Competition ahead of the closing date on Friday 26 June.
Facilitator: Dennis Johnstone, award winner of the 2025 Black in White Poetry Competition Workplace Category.
Dennis is a multi-award-winning poet and healthcare support worker whose poems have been published in Black in White: White Face, Foreign Hands and More Than Words: An Anthology of Winning and Commended Poems (2025).
His work draws on close observation of work, healthcare, domestic life, and the natural world, exploring how ordinary situations carry ethical weight, political consequence, and philosophical tension. He tends toward a pared-back style — attentive to structure, cadence, and restraint — using concrete situations as a means of inquiry rather than overt exposition.
He has published poems on his long-running blog, stoneheadcroft.com, since the 1990s.
