Poetry Workshop: Writing Through the Ages

'Writing Through the Ages' is a poetry carousel aiming to take you on a three-step journey: from 7th century Arabic forms to the Romantic period and beyond into the historical avant-garde movements of the 20th century. At our first writing station, we'll be examining how contemporary ghazals evolve from the original Arabic form; we will use and adapt the formal stringencies to our own playful endeavours. In our second workshop, we're celebrating the joy and beauty of rural landscapes, inspired by Wordsworth, Shelley, and Tagore, while also exploring the human impact on nature today. Together, we’ll craft verses that connect our own personal reflection on the living world with the environmental concerns of the day. Finally, our last station will guide you through the poetry manifesto of Tristan Tzara, a Romanian avant-garde artist and founder of the global Dada movement. In following his instructions, we're embracing nonsense and letting the poem write itself! This will be a relatively small and intimate event, so hopefully we can share some of our creations with each other at the end. Come write with us, through us, around us. Come write for yourself, for someone unknown, write for the love of the craft.