Dialect Writing Craft Series: Jorie Graham Deep Dive

  • Online
  • November 3
  • 18:30 - 20:00
Event Website

The time comes when you might want to stop skimming the choppy poetry surface and deep dive into one poet’s work. In this guided online workshop series, you’ll be uncovering the craft and intelligence of Jorie Graham’s award-winning poetry. In 6 classes over a full term, you will build up a knowledge of her craft and become fluent in her themes. You’ll be looking at the poets who have influenced her practice and thinking about your own poet-ancestors.

Plantswoman and ecopoet from the Fens, Alice Willitts, will lead this deep dive. Alice graduated from the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Poetry Masters with Distinction in 2018 as a mature student. She is the author of Think Thing: an ecopoetic practice (Elephant Press, 2021), With love, (Live Canon, 2020) and Dear, (Magma, 2019). She co-founded On The Verge Cambridge and runs the #57 Poetry Collective. She co-edited the Collaborations issue of Magma in 2020.

Alice says of the course: “Jorie Graham’s work has been a compelling influence on my own writing and thinking. I will guide you in the practice of deep reading the individual poem, in analysing a collection and connecting it to the poet’s other works and in considering the wider community of thinking that informs them.

These classes are participatory and generative. You will be active participants in discussions and readings. At the end of this course, you will have thoroughly explored the work of Jorie Graham, researched and presented to the group on an aspect of her practice and written a poem of your own in response to studying her craft.

You will be expected to read the set texts and commit to 3 hours of research and writing time between classes. There are 6 classes, held fortnightly over 12 weeks. You will need to read 4 collections of poetry: Runaway, Fast, PLACE and Sea Change. You are encouraged to read the retrospective collection, From The New World (1976-2014) to familiarise yourself with her earlier works. In early September, you will be sent a preparation booklet for the course.

Meetings take place via Zoom on Wednesday evenings 6.30pm – 8pm on the following dates:

22nd September 2021
6th October 2021
20th October 2021
(Half term)
10th November 2021
24th November 2021
8th December 2021

This course will run with a minimum of 12 participants.