Faber Academy: Writing Day with Richard Scott

Full description

Join Faber Academy tutor Richard Scott for this workshop in which you’ll consider our poetic ancestors and how they might inspire – through intertextuality, idea and form – our writing now.

As well as generative writing prompts, you’ll also discuss poems by the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Will Harris, Wanda Coleman and torrin a. greathouse as you summon what Seamus Heaney referred to as the ‘compound ghost’ of inspiration, influence and intertextuality.

This course is for poets of all experience levels and backgrounds, who want to explore new themes in a lively environment. This day will be focused on unearthing new techniques for your writing and on generating new poems.

Schedule
This course takes place over a full Saturday, at The Common Room in Newcastle city centre.

10.00–13.00
‘A Freak of
Letters’
The morning will be spent summoning our own chosen poetic ancestors using intertextuality as a formal device. We’ll be looking at masks, poetic ghosts and how language itself might be haunted. We’ll be guided by Allen Ginsberg, Will Harris, Sarah Howe and some Tarot.

There’ll be multiple writing exercises to push your practise and plenty of time for questions as we become in the words of Lucie Brock-Broido, ‘a freak of letters crossing down a rare / Path bleak with poplars’.

13.00–14.00
Lunch break

14.00–16.00
Burnings
The afternoon will be spent looking at how intertextuality and hauntings might appear in a poet’s formal choices. We’ll be guided by the tarot in our own writings as we investigate the Haibun, the Burning Haibun and the American sonnet as we queer our own poetic forms. We’ll be guided by James Merrill, Wanda Coleman, Terrance Hayes and torrin a. greathouse in our quest to set things on fire, poetically.

And there’ll be more writing exercises and further time to discuss these new poetic ideas.