The Art of the Poetic Line, Masterclass with Judith Beveridge, 11/5/23
The art of the line break is an essential skill for all poets…
What distinguishes poetry from prose is the way in which the sounds of language are organised into lines. The line is often what distinguishes our experience of poetry as poetry. Although free verse often uses rhyme and meter, we know it uses these non-systematically, yet free verse is still organised around technical constraints. TS Eliot said that ‘no verse is free for the poet who wants to do a good job.’ In free verse, a poet can express emotions and thoughts by the way that the sentences move over the lines, and by shifting and stretching and changing the syntax. In a free verse poem, the line breaks are of vital importance, lines without an attentive approach to where the line-endings occur can end up sounding flaccid and prose-like. We will look at examples of poems that use the line and line endings to great effect and also do some writing exercises to help with understanding the free-verse line.
Timing and Cost
10am UK time // 5pm Perth Australia // Adelaide & Darwin 6.30pm // Brisbane, Melbourne & Sydney 7pm
A useful link for checking other timezones: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
Thursday 11th May
2.5 hours long
Cost £30 GBP (under $60AUD with cost effective exchange via STRIPE)
Online on Zoom
About Judith Beveridge
Judith Beveridge lives in Sydney, Australia. She has published seven volumes of poetry all of which have won or been short-listed for major prizes. Her latest volume, Sun Music: New and Selected Poems (Giramondo, 2018), won the Prime Minister’s Poetry Prize in 2019. She has edited and co-edited a number of anthologies including Contemporary Australian Poetry, (Puncher & Wattmann 2016). She was poetry editor for the literary magazine Meanjin from 2005-2016. Her work has been studied in schools and universities and translated into many languages. She taught poetry writing at post-graduate level for many years at the University of Sydney and continues to work in the community. She is a recipient of the Philip Hodgins Memoria Medal and the Christopher Brennan Award for excellence in literature
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