Performing the Animal Workshop

In 1974, the philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked: 'What is it like to be a bat?'. This workshop looks at poetry and performance as a way of circling the issue of animals and how we communicate with, through and about them. How much will we ever know about what crows really think? What is the real feline unconscious? Why do poets love to use certain animals as metaphors? We will look at animals and language, gesture, scale, sensing, rhythm and more as we discover ways of expressing animality and animal worlds in poetry.

This workshop is free and open to all.

Location: Room 104A, Lord Hope Building, University of Strathclyde.

Please bring along your favourite writing materials.

Tickets are limited so if you can no longer make it, we ask that you release your ticket on eventbrite for others to take your place.

About the workshop tutors

Karólína Rós Ólafsdóttir is a poet and an artist writing Icelandic and English. She works across creative writing, translation, performance and clowning. She holds a BA from Goldsmiths University’s English and Creative Writing department and is currently pursuing a Creative Writing MA at the University of Iceland. Her work has appeared in publications, performances and exhibitions in Iceland, Germany, South Korea and the United Kingdom. Her latest work, Úr hvalnum / Whale of a Time is out now with MÚKK, her pamphlet All in Animal Time was published with SPAM Press in Glasgow in 2023 and the bookwork Hversdagar with Pastel Series in 2018.

is an artist and poet based in Glasgow. She is director of SPAM Press, a Lecturer in English & Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde and one half of Project Somnolence: a portable lab for exploring speculative approaches to sleep across art, literature and daily life. Her latest book, Midsummer Song (Hypercritique), is out now with NoUP Press. She is also the author of Cinders (Krupskaya, 2024), An Aura of Plasma Around the Sun(Hem Press, 2023), Cocoa & Nothing(with Colin Herd, SPAM Press, 2023), Visions & Feed (HVTN Press, 2022), String Feeling (Erotoplasty Editions, 2022) and The Luna Erratum(Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021). In 2023, Maria was included in the Saltire Society's ‘40 under 40’ list celebrating ‘outstanding Scottish creatives’.

Accessibility

The venue is wheelchair accessible and has toilets on the same floor. More info here.

Please email maria.sledmere[at]strath.ac.uk if you have further questions about the workshop or your attendance.

Host or Publisher Creative Writing at University of Strathclyde