When we’re writing a poem, how and when should we strike a balance between ‘the ‘lyric impulse’ and the ‘mind thinking’? In this poetry workshop, we will consider this question by experimenting with voice, using visual art as a starting point. Through a series of writing exercises in response to artworks and the language of art, we will try to draft work that surprises – maybe even shocks – us with what it does…ekphrasis that doesn’t sound like ekphrasis. 

The poem we draft will be a kind of ‘text with eyes’ – something that looks – and speaks – outwards, while also conveying what’s within: the thing witnessed or perceived. The overall aim will be to see how, as poets, we might be able write in voices that are not our own, in order to express something true. And how doing so can offer inspiration and freedom. It’s a question, as Elizabeth Bishop wrote in her college notebook, ‘of using the poet’s proper materials, with which he’s equipped by nature, i.e. immediate, intense physical reaction, a sense of metaphor and decoration in everything—to express something not of them—something I suppose spiritual.

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/

Tara Bergin is an Irish poet, born in Dublin. She has published three collections of poetry with Carcanet Press: This is Yarrow, winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry; The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes; and most recently Savage Tales, listed as one of the Irish Times ‘best new poetry books of 2022’ and shortlisted for the Pigott Prize for Poetry 2023. Reviewing the latter collection for The Irish Times, Stephen Sexton wrote: ‘Tara Bergin’s Savage Tales underlines her position as one of our most exciting poets. [...] generous and humane and utterly compelling.’ Tara now lives in the North of England and teaches in the Creative Writing Programme at Newcastle University.

Tara says: Sometimes students worry about being ‘original’ because this is a word often used to denote ‘good’. But the originality comes in the treatment of your subject matter, not in the subject matter itself. What’s original is the voice you use to express these things. That’s one of the things you're looking for as a writer: the voice that will reach inside your head, strike a match and start a fire.

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