Writing the Pantoum: Repetition, Reverie and the Art of Echo with David Morley 11/5/26

Join award-winning poet David Morley for a bold and immersive workshop on the pantoum, one of poetry’s most haunting and versatile forms. Driven by repetition, the pantoum moves forward and backward at once, generating pressure, resonance, and a distinctive dream logic.

The form stems from the pantun, traditional Malay poetry often in rhyming couplets or interwoven quatrains, used for storytelling and recited or sung. As the pantoum evolved, it became a flexible modern form built from interlocking four-line stanzas, where lines recur and transform as the poem unfolds, often circling back to its beginning. This looping structure creates an incantatory effect, slowing the poem and filling it with echoes.

In this session, you will explore the pantoum through close reading and hands-on practice, guided by the tutor’s innovative visual map of the form and by his award-winning experiments with extended pantoums, including their transformation into sonnet coronas in the acclaimed Lyrebird sequence. You will take inspiration from poems by A. E. Stallings, Natalie Diaz, and Carolyn Kizer.

You will be guided step by step in drafting your own pantoum, leaving with a strong work in progress and strategies for extending the form with ambition and play.

David Morley is a poet and teacher whose work has earned major recognition for both its literary and educational impact. His most recent collection, Passion (published last year), was named an LRB Bookshop Poetry Book of the Year. His previous collection, FURY, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. He won the Ted Hughes Award for The Invisible Gift: Selected Poems. A pioneer of podcasting in creative writing, David created the influential Slow Poetry and Writing Challenges spoken-word projects. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

2.5 hours long

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

Online on Zoom

Waiting list - If live workshops places have sold out, please contact me directly here: https://www.tickettailor.com/promoter/help/link/cathdrakestheverandah if you'd like to be included on a waiting list for the live workshops. Don't forget to include the name of the workshop or use the dropdown list.

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/

Cost £30 GBP (with cost effective exchange via STRIPE)

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

This event will be recorded. Our workshops are intended as live and interactive. However, there are a small number of tickets for those keen to come who cannot make the date of this workshop that are 'recording only' tickets to be purchased in advance ONLY for those who can't make the date. If you buy a live ticket and don't turn up on the day, you can't access the recording – sorry, it's not a fall back. You can buy a live OR recorded ticket. This is because we primarily want poets to come and participate in live workshops. 'Recording only' tickets allow access to listen to a recording of the workshop during the 2 weeks following the workshop. (Note that we may share the recording at a future time to new participants.)