This workshop will explore the poetry of Louise Glück who won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature, the year before she died. Although Louise Glück herself would have disputed the label, she was undoubtedly one of the finest nature poets of the 20th and 21st centuries. Across her career her poems were consistent in their vibrant evocation of place and contemporary interpretations of classical mythology. Her Pulitzer-winning collection The Wild Iris is a masterclass in how to structure a book in which the individual poems stand alone whilst simultaneously speaking to each other to create a broader, unified field of meaning. The poet Robert Hass described Glück as 'one of the purest and most accomplished lyric poets.' TS Eliot shortlisted poet, Karen McCarthy Woolf, whose doctoral research explores Glück's ambivalent relationship to the sacred, the self and the more-than-human, will guide us through some generative writing exercises and close readings of poems that unpack her literary strategies and poetic techniques.

Dr Karen McCarthy Woolf FRSL, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Top Doll (Dialogue Books), was born in London to English and Jamaican parents. She is the author of three poetry books and the editor of numerous literary anthologies. As a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar at UCLA, she was writer in residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights. Her debut An Aviary of Small Birds (Carcanet Press, 2014), was an Observer Book of the Year and her second collection, Seasonal Disturbances (Carcanet Press, 2017), was a winner in the inaugural Laurel Prize. McCarthy Woolf has performed her work worldwide – in the US, Caribbean, Asia and across Europe at venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican and Kings Place for Poetica Electronica, which showcased music collaborations with various dance and techno producers. Her poems have been translated into Turkish, Swedish, Spanish, Polish and Dutch, produced as an animated and choreographed short film, exhibited by Poems on the Underground and dropped from a helicopter over the Houses of Parliament.

Cost £24 GBP (with cost effective exchange via STRIPE)

Online on Zoom

1.5 hours long

Start time: 9am UK time // 5pm Perth Australia // 7.30pm Adelaide // 7pm Brisbane // 8pm Sydney, AEST // 6.30pm Darwin // 10pm NZ

Advertised times on this site are in London, UK Timezone, but when you add the event to your calendar it should be correct for your local time zone.

You can check your timezone against London UK time here: https://greenwichmeantime.com/time-gadgets/time-zone-converter/

Zoom link and materials will be sent by email at least 2 days prior. If you don’t receive it get in touch with me.

More events here https://www.cathdrake.com