Poetry in St Andrews has a long and noble tradition, stretching back to the medieval Scots makars. Students will be encouraged to engage with this most subversive of literary forms, one which has long been central to the work of the School.

The diversity of teaching approaches reflects the School’s belief that poetry is passionate art, one in which individualism should be especially prized: it should not be taught in a one-size-fits all way.

In the core modules, resident poets (Robert Crawford, Emma Jones, Oli Hazzard and Don Paterson) teach the composition of poetry through:

• technical seminars
• group workshops where students learn to hone their critical and editorial skills
• one-to-one tutorials, which will encourage students to find ways of working that best suit their individual temperament and talent.

Teaching staff pride themselves on not always agreeing with each other, subscribing to the belief that good art does not necessarily mean critical consensus. However, all believe in an apprenticeship which acknowledges the central importance of reading, of the poet’s understanding of their own place within poetry’s long tradition, and of meticulous and energetic practice. The School seeks to reflect the broad church of contemporary poetry from the traditional to the experimental, and has no ‘house style’. Teaching staff believe that the academic and the creative are entirely compatible, and students are encouraged to take advantage of the research environment of the School and pursue any discipline or methodology they may find useful, from the literary-critical and the linguistic to the neuroscientific.

Teaching staff also see poetry as a public art. Poets are encouraged to ‘anticipate the condition of publication’, and see their work through the eyes of a reader – and indeed actively seek those readers out, through both publication and performance.

The prose writing strand of the MLitt in Creative Writing offers grounding and support in a range of prose composition skills, including the short story, the novel, journalistic and feature writing, and various forms of creative non-fiction, including life-writing-based explorations of place, history and the nature of art. One recurring philosophical concern has been with the interplay between the lyrical prose description of the living world and what Heidegger called "the hopeless frenzy of enchained technology and rootless organisation" that has come to dominate social structures throughout the world, but each new cohort of students brings its own preoccupations and ambitions, and teaching staff pride themselves in providing a research and writing climate that allows students to pursue their chosen branch of this rich craft – and their philosophical, political and artistic ideas – to the fullest.

In practice, the programme offers a disciplined framework for development without pushing students into forms, genres or methods of composition that feel unnatural. The insights of academic colleagues are honoured, while retaining a just scepticism of those areas of research that may have strayed into what Paul Middleton has called "physics envy" while at the same time exercising the kind of rigour that Henry James or Flaubert brought to their examination, and downright rejection, of received ideas. Most of all, a serious, professional, playful and generous critical environment is encouraged, in which students test ideas, first lines of dialogue, fresh intimations of character or drama with peers.