Activating the White Space, Absences & Silence, Poetry Masterclass with Philip Gross 6/7/26

Writing: inky words on an empty page – we take that for granted. What happens when that blank space steps in from the margins to become a participant in the poem? We will explore the range of things that a visible absence of words can say – the many kinds of silence to which can give a voice, and the way it can move our attention, physically, on the page. Whitespace, it turns out, is far from nothing; it is a subtle tool for writers sensitive to ways we can mean more than we literally say.

Philip Gross’s poetry has always been a dialogue with silence, most clearly in his Estonia-based collection The Shores of Vaikus (2024). He will share some of his own experiments, alongside others' examples ranging from haiku to Projective Verse, from Sappho’s fragments to Erasure Poetry, on the track of a practical grasp of how whitespace can be a conscious part of any writer’s toolkit, and a pointer to an active principle at the heart of poetry.

2hrs 15mins 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/

Philip Gross was born in Cornwall and, for the last 20 years, has lived in South Wales. The principle of water, in particular Môr Hafren, the Severn estuary, has formed a backdrop to his work since The Water Table won the TS Eliot Prize in 2009. His most recent collection 'The Shores of Vaikus' (Bloodaxe, 2024) returns to Estonia, birthplace of his father, a wartime refugee. As well as twenty-odd collections of poetry, for adults and young people, he has written novels for young people, opera libretti and radio plays. One of the writer-educators who helped establish creative writing in UK universities, he not so much retired as ‘released himself back into the wild’ in 2017. Collaboration, especially across the different arts, is one of the springboards for his writing, and he brings his Quaker understanding of the positive depths of silence to the dance of words and silence that we know as poetry.

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.

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.

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.)

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