Festivals, Poetry Events & Workshops

Arvon Residential Poetry Course
with Kim Moore and Jonathan Edwards

Poetry: Other Lives, Intertwined
13th-18th June 2022
£850 (grants available on application to Arvon to help with course fee)

at The Hurst, Shropshire

‘The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages’

Frank O’Hara

‘Language is what eases the pain of living with other people, language is what makes the wounds come open again’

Anne Carson

Lovers, mothers, friends, enemies: often the hardest hitting poetry is about the smallest everyday detail of our most intimate relationships.

But how do we navigate writing about others? Do we have permission to write another person’s story? Can we make stuff up? Perhaps we can be another persona entirely? With poets Kim Moore and Jonathan Edwards, we will explore the complex and joyful world of writing about people, both ourselves and others. We will discuss the self-censorship we might encounter, as well as the love and joy. We will think about how poetry can explore communication, misunderstandings and silences, between ourselves and others, in a way that gets to the very essence of what it means to be human.

Over the course of the week, you will gain the tools to write richer ‘peopled’ poems, both real and imagined, while developing the most important connection of all: between poem and reader.

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