Workshop: Poetry with Mícheál McCann

Day 1

9:30a.m.–11a.m. Out of Body Poetry:

How do we understand experience? By what we see and think, some would argue. On the contrary, some poets write experience from a place beyond the poetic voice: actually outside of themselves and subsequently come to appreciate what they see (and themselves) in a radically new way. With a suite of poems that explore ‘out of body’ poetry, we will come to scrutinise how we render our own experience.

11:30a.m.–1p.m. Workshop (each participant will have at least one opportunity to workshop their existing work)

1:30p.m.–2:30p.m. Writing; Response to Prompts

Day 2

9:30a.m.–11a.m. The Love Poem:

It has been said that every poem is a sort of elegy. It can also be said that every poem is a love poem, trying to beat back the dark facts of life. Love poems are not naïve to the pressing and ephemeral nature of said life, and their commemorative quality should be acknowledged and valued. This morning workshop will provide space to question what we write love poems about, where we find places to love, and how a subject might be unalterably changed in the light of poetry’s attention.

11:30a.m.–1p.m. Workshop (each participant will have at least one opportunity to workshop their existing work)

1:30p.m.–2:30p.m. Writing; Response to Prompts

Day 3

9:30a.m.–11a.m. The Transmundane?:

Poetry is often said to elevate ‘ordinary’ experience to something worthy of poetic attention, and a poet’s assumption of the ordinary indelibly informs their approach to their poetry. We will discuss if ordinary experience is something that must be heightened in a poem in order to be written about, to make it ‘worthy’. This morning’s workshop will explore poems that focus attention on the ordinary, mundane aspects of their environs: the domestic interior or the half-whispered conversation is the true stage on which most of our life plays out. We will forge poems from unremarkable conversations, sharply measured descriptions, and question what might happen if we bear to lay things out as ordinarily (unbearably) as they happen to us.

11:30a.m.–1p.m. Workshop (each participant will have at least one opportunity to workshop their existing work)

1:30p.m.–2:30p.m. Writing; Response to Prompts