A Supposed Person: The Making and Masking of Imaginative Selves, Lucy Dougan & Alan Fyfe 11/9/25

In this poetry masterclass, Western Australian poets and scholars, Lucy Dougan and Alan Fyfe explore masking and distancing, personas and personification in the making of imaginative selves in the work of two iconic poets from different eras and different hemispheres, Emily Dickinson and Fay Zwicky.

Iconic American Emily Dickinson (1830 to 1886) once wrote: When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person. Dickinson’s most famous works are often narratives with intimate details of events she could not have possibly experienced, such as her own death. Across the body of Dickinson’s work, there are many approaches to imagined selves, from personification of inanimate objects to gender morphing, perhaps related to the poet’s attempts to Tell all the truth but tell it slant.

Paired with Dickinson is the highly regarded contemporary Western Australian poet Fay Zwicky (1933 to 2017) who had a deep engagement with Dickinson’s poetry, both through her own experimental practice and her teaching. Whilst Zwicky has written directly about Dickinson, such as in the poem Emily Dickinson Judges the Bread Division at the Amherst Cattle Show, 1858, Dickinson’s wider influence on Zwicky is felt throughout her work. It is traceable in the dramatic monologues of Zwicky’s Ark Voices poetry sequence which imagines the lived worlds of various animals. It is also present in the autobiographical poem Kaddish, a complex mosaic of voices, and a meditation on the tension between daughterly devotion and rebellion.

Lucy, the co-editor of Zwicky’s collected works, and Alan, a scholar of Dickinson will lead close readings, discussions and writing exercises to inspire your reading and writing.

2hrs 30mins long 

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

Times on the homepage of 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/

Lucy Dougan is a widely published prize-winning poet. Her books include Memory Shell (Five Islands Press), On the Circumvesuviana (Picaro Press), Meanderthals (Web del Sol), White Clay, The Guardians and Monster Field, all published by Giramondo. With Tim Dolin, she is the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Fay Zwicky (UWAP). Her PhD, concerning representations of Naples, was awarded in 2010 from the University of Western Australia. Her poetry has been the recipient of the Mary Gilmore Award, the Alec Bolton Award, and the Western Australian Premier’s Award for poetry in 2016. She has extensive experience as a poetry editor, working for magazines and organisations such as HEAT, Australian Book Review, Axon, Westerly, and Australian Poetry. She is currently poetry editor for Westerly and is the co-editor of a new edition of Anne Brontë’s poems for Cambridge UP. Lucy has taught creative writing and literature at various universities, including the University of Newcastle (NSW), Murdoch, Edith Cowan and Curtin Universities.

Alan Fyfe is a poet and storyteller from Boorloo (Perth). His first novel, T, was listed for Australian and international manuscript awards, and was published by Transit Lounge in 2022 (Fay Zwicky is fondly evoked in this novel). T was then listed for a WA Premier’s Award for an emerging writer in 2023. His debut poetry collection, G-d, Sleep, and Chaos, won silver in Flying Islands’ first poetry-manuscript award, and is published by Gazebo books. Fyfe was shortlisted for a West Australian Premier’s Prize for the second year running in the 2024 fellowship category. Most recently, G-d, Sleep, and Chaos was highly commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and also listed for the 2025 West Australian Premier’s Prize in the poetry category. His second novel, The Cross Thieves, is due to be released by Transit Lounge later this year. Alan teaches literature at the University of Western Australia.

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Zoom link and joining information (including handout to print) will be sent by email at least 2 days prior. If you don’t receive it get in touch with me.

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This event will be recorded.