The Saturday workshops, 2012
These one-off workshops should be useful and fun no matter what stage of your writing life you’re at: the idea is simply to learn and spark off ideas, and to go home with the beginnings of a poem (or even more than one poem) in your noteboook.
See what my students say, and feel free to contact me for more info.
March 3 & 31: Two linked workshops
These two workshops are designed to work together explore the change of the season, the literary traditions around death and rebirth, and what these ideas (and facts) mean in everyday life. But you can do just one of the days equally well!
March 3rd: Death
'There must be more to life than this, Henry'
DEATH. They call it the grim reaper, the final frontier, the end, the ultimate sacrifice, the great leveller, the Big Sleep. The thing we are among even in the midst of life. But what happens when you reach the limits of what you can imagine? And what are the smaller deaths we suffer all the time? Is it really the end?
You should go home energised and full of ideas – with at least one poem beginning in your notebook.
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March 31st: Rebirth
'But he who kisses the joy as it flies/ lives in eternity's sun rise...'
REBIRTH. Look around you. Things are beginning to grow again. What does that mean for us?
We’ll read and discuss a variety of poems, look at images, and investigate the shoots of the future springing up around us – the rebirth that follows the death of what went before. The beginning of a glorious summer? Green shoots of ambition? Babies? New jobs? Spring weddings? A second chance? What about dreams?
And what about the new beginning you never wanted? What IS rebirth, how do we experience it, grasp it, write it?
This workshop will be a springboard for ideas and connections – we’ll write and read and talk, look at another slideshow, and there may even be some chocolate egg.
And you will go home with at least one poem beginning to take shape in your notebook.
May 5th: The words of work
For May Day. What’s the language of the workplace and what’s the language of poetry? We read surprising poems, do writing exercises, and play games with jargon.
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June 9th: Stretchy Sonnets, back by popular demand
How is a sonnet a sonnet, and how can you stretch it and still have it be a sonnet, doggone it? After this day you will have a healthy irreverence for this wonderful form of poem.
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July 14th: Freedom!
On Bastille Day. I’m planning some fun multimedia and maybe a guest speaker for this one.
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…August 18th: holidays, to be decided
Something to while away the summer weeks, while everyone else is away; tbc.