Experiment with Poetic Voice: Karen McCarthy Woolf, 20/6/22
Karen McCarthy Woolf leads a poetry masterclass experimenting with voice to expand and enhance our poetic repertoire.
Why do we write poetry? The simple answer is because we have something to say. Who or what we want to speak to, for or about will shape and inform the voice the poem takes. Whatever its signature, whether intimate or public, fictional or autobiographical, every poem has a unique voice calibrated to express ideas and emotions via form, technique and a range of literary strategies. Thinking about voice in poetry also reminds us of its proximity to song, of music, the lyric and poetry’s roots as an oral artform. How can we vary and amplify the voices we deploy to expand and enliven our repertoire? In this Masterclass we will consider a variety of approaches to the poetic voice and how this can enrich our own writing through the works of an array of international poets including Louise Glück, Warsan Shire and Valzhyna Mort.
Timing and Cost
10am UK time // 5pm Perth Australia // Adelaide 6.30pm // Brisbane & Sydney 7pm // Darwin 6.30pm
A useful link for checking other timezones: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
Monday 20th June
2.5 hours long
Cost £30 GBP (under $60AUD with cost effective exchange via STRIPE)
Maximum 18 people
Online on Zoom
About Karen McCarthy Woolf
Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf’s first poetry collection An Aviary of Small Birds was nominated for the Forward Felix Dennis and Jerwood Prizes and her latest Seasonal Disturbances was a winner in the inaugural Laurel Prize. In 2019 she moved to Los Angeles as a Fulbright postdoctoral scholar and Writer in Residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA exploring the relationship between poetry and law. 2021 takes her to Brazil, as an artist in residence at the Sacatar Institute in Bahia writing new work that explores sugar and its cultural and material legacies.
Other highlights include a multi-authored adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando which was nominated for a BBC Audio Award in 2020 and a re-versioning of Homer’s Book of the Dead for BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in which Odysseus is reimagined as a London cab driver. Published everywhere from Granta to the Financial Times and Guardian McCarthy Woolf has been translated into Turkish, Swedish, Italian, Dutch and Spanish, produced as a choreographed short film, exhibited by Poems on the Underground and dropped from a helicopter over the Houses of Parliament. She is the editor of six literary anthologies spotlighting many new talents who are now critically acclaimed. Last year she was Chair of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize and a judge of the National Poetry Competition which made literary history in awarding the prize to a black writer for the first time in 40 years.
Part of the UK/Australia Season of Culture 2021-22, a major programme of cultural exchange taking place across the two nations. Who are we now? How can we describe, challenge or create new connections with our land and people in the 2020s?
If this event sells out, contact me using this form TO BE ADDED TO THE WAITING LIST – I often do draw on the waiting list. Include the name of the workshop.
