This is a small informal fun drop-in session to practice poetic metre. Following our 'Foundations in Poetic Metre' workshop, participants suggested that it would be good to practise poetic metre together. Metre takes practise to get it into your bloodstream and hear it ring out. It's also fun and rewarding, a great skill to add to your poetic toolbox.

We’ll look at the poetic metre and variations in two poems sent in advance. Have a go at scanning the poems prior to the session if you can. We’ll discuss the choice of metre and variations given. If we have time we could try writing a few lines in metre ourselves, scan our lines and share some of these. I'm open to what participants want to do.

Ideally, participants in this session will have some grounding in metre, but even you don't, you'll see us in action scanning poems, so it will give you some insight into metre.

We'll be looking at accentual syllabic metre (e.g. iambic pentametre) only - metre determined by the number and alternation of its stressed and unstressed syllables, organized into feet (Poetry Foundation definition). This is the most common metre used in English language poetry

Let's see what we can do in an hour with 15mins overspill for questions and discussion.

I teach metre based on the approach and mentoring from Mimi Khalvati.  

If there is enough interest, we'll meet throughout the year.

Zoom and joining information (poems to scan) will be emailed at least 2 days prior. Let me know if you don't see it.

Timing:  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.

About the facilitator: Cath Drake is from Perth, Australia and lives in London, UK Her poetry collection, The Shaking City (Seren Books, 2020) was longlisted in international Laurel Prize and highly commended in the UK Forward Prize. It was described by Philip Gross as ‘a guide to staying clear-eyed, combative and caring in unsettling times.’ It followed Sleeping with Rivers, a Poetry Book Society Choice & winner of the Seren/Mslexia poetry pamphlet prize. Cath has been published widely in anthologies and literary journals in UK, Ireland, US and Australia, including Best Australian Poems (4x), Plumwood Mountain Journal and The Weekend Australian. She has twice been be awarded second place in the international Ginkgo Eco-poetry Prize and also highly commended in this prize. An environmental science graduate, Cath worked for a decade as an environmental scientist, writer and journalist and won awards for her environmental nonfiction writing and broadcasting. Cath is also mindfulness teacher and she runs The Verandah, quality online poetry events which includes workshops focused on the climate crisis. 

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