Join Tara Bergin for an online poetry masterclass on Monday 24th February.

When we'€™re writing a poem, how and when should we strike a balance between the 'lyric impulse' and the 'mind thinking'? In this poetry workshop, we will consider this question by experimenting with voice, using visual art as a starting point. Through a series of writing exercises in response to artworks and the language of art, we will try to draft work that surprises - maybe even shocks - us with what it does... ekphrasis that doesn'€™t sound like ekphrasis. 

The poem we draft will be a kind of 'text with eyes'€™ - something that looks - and speaks - outwards, while also conveying what'€™s within: the thing witnessed or perceived. The overall aim will be to see how, as poets, we might be able write in voices that are not our own, in order to express something true. And how doing so can offer inspiration and freedom. It's a question, as Elizabeth Bishop wrote in her college notebook, '€˜of using the poet'€™s proper materials, with which he'€™s equipped by nature, i.e. immediate, intense physical reaction, a sense of metaphor and decoration in everything - to express something not of them - €”something I suppose spiritual.