NEW DATE:
27 April,11.00-13.00, G.13 (Studio Space), Armstrong Building.
Dr Sam Buchan-Watts, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Art Writing
Wordsworth once declared that ‘poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’, a phrase often used to suggest the uniquely personal and passionate status of poetry as an art form. However, Wordsworth’s modulating clause, ‘it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity’, can get forgotten.
This workshop offers us a forum to explore ideas (and anxieties) about poetry as an emotional medium, and to discuss the limits of the personal in contemporary poetry. What is being asked of the language of a poem, in contrast to other forms of speech, and particularly to text-based works of visual art? How does writing ‘recollect’ affective states? Is poetry a medium for oversharing?
We’ll be looking at poets, like Eileen Myles, James Schuyler and CAConrad, whose work and practice is often in dialogue with contemporary art discourses.
No prior knowledge or experience of writing poetry is necessary. We will be reading some poems and exploring a short writing exercise. You are welcome to bring along poems (by you or others). Numbers are limited, please email sam.buchan-watts@newcastle.ac.uk to reserve a place.
Image: Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’ rendered by artist Patrick Hayman (1971)