The Poetry Business: Apart Together: Digital Poetry Workshop with Jonathan Edwards
‘A rebound/Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground.’ So writes Gerard Manley Hopkins in ‘Repeat that, repeat.’ This workshop will explore ways in which the sonic rebound of refrain and repetition can be used to generate powerful and echoing poems.
Greta Stoddart’s ‘You drew breath’ and Glyn Maxwell’s ‘Hurry My Way’ are among poems which understand the musical and emotive potential of refrain, while repetition is also being re-appropriated as an effective structural device by forms like the prose poem.
Sometimes nothing is as good in completely changing the emotional ground of a poem than saying the same thing again, and we’ll look at ways in which repetition can be used to drive the poem into new areas.
Repetition and refrain wed poems effectively to music and to speech, and the workshop will look at how these devices can add energy and power to poems on any subject.
Jonathan Edwards’ first collection, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award and the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award. It was shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018), also received the Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice Award, and in 2019 his poem about Newport Bridge was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. He lives in Crosskeys, South Wales.
Date: Tuesday 21 June 2022, 11:00 – 12:30 BST
Location: Online
Cost: £19.76 – £46.60
Book your place here