Online Poetry Workshop with Ciaran Berry:
Generating New and Revising Old Poems.
Starts: Saturday October 2nd
Time: 2.00pm – 3.30pm
Duration: 4 weeks (October 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd)
Cost: €25
Course Level: Emerging
All remote courses take place on Irish Standard Time (GMT)
Summary: This four-week course will focus on generating new poems and revising old poems with the idea of building towards a body of work to submit to journals or add to a pamphlet, or first collection. The course will feature exercises designed to help you towards new poems as well as offering you strategies to approach those poems you’ve struggled with and been frustrated by — the ones you’ve abandoned at the bottom of a drawer, or in the back of a notebook. We’ll challenge the notion that poems can’t be revised, or reimagined, or reshaped from their original form.
What to Expect: Each week we’ll look at small groups of poems by participating writers, as well as groups of poems from recently published collections, with an eye on how you gather work into a more coherent and impressive whole. Participants will be asked to share work they want help with, as well as work they’re already happy with. We’ll also consider some of the thinking already out there among poets about how to approach revision and move from draft to draft.
Outcomes: Participants will leave the course with new work and a better sense of how to move forward with work they’ve already undertaken.
Ciaran Berry is the author of The Sphere of Birds, The Dead Zoo, and Liner Notes, all published by The Gallery Press. His awards include the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, The Michael Murphy Memorial Award, and a Whiting Award. He grew up in Connemara and Donegal and now lives in Hartford, Connecticut, where he co-directs the Creative Writing Program at (the other) Trinity College.