Songs of Love and Hate, Writing Lyric Extremes with Tara Bergin 20/8/26

Experiment with a range of approaches to poetic voice, subject and structure, to make poems that revel in contrast, contradiction and the joy of lyric contention with marvellously inventive Irish poet, Tara Bergin.

Themes of love and hate have occupied poets for centuries, but how can today’s writers continue to express these emotional extremes in a language and form that feels fresh and multi-layered? What does the term ‘lyric’ imply these days? How might we write an ‘anti-lyric’? And could our own love/hate relationship with poetry help us in our quest as writers?

We will explore these ideas by experimenting with a variety of methods and structures, and drawing on extremes of subject-matter, perspective, and modes of expression. Discover exciting ways into writing poems that are perhaps deeper, more rebellious, embracing the dark and the light.

The title of the workshop is from Leonard Cohen’s darkest, perhaps the most emotionally exposed album, when he said “absolutely everything was beginning to fall apart around me: “my spirit, my intentions, my will.”

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.

2.5 hours long

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

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