Poetry for Life: An Afternoon of Poetry Workshops

Join us for an inspirational afternoon of workshops led by poets and writers including: Tamar Yoseloff, Jacqueline Saphra, Dr Ashley Hickson-Lovence and Dr Amanda Hodgkinson. Tamar’s workshop responds to Eliza Stephens’s photography that is exhibited in the Gallery. A private view and tour by Eliza is included for all attendees.

This event is in partnership with Poetry in Aldeburgh and is hosted by the Suffolk Centre for Culture and Heritage ahead of an evening of poetry and performance with Lemn Sissay.

Choose up to two of the workshops on offer by our talented and celebrated poets and writers. Workshops cost just £15 for one or £25 for two. When choosing two workshops, please select one from A or B and one from C or D and use the code TWOWORKSHOPS.

Info: A dynamic writing workshop led by Dr. Ashley Hickson-Lovence that reimagines the sonnet for contemporary voices. Drawing on journeys, routes, and old and new adventures, the session explores how place, movement and memory shape who we are. Forget rigid rules, iambic pentameter and the idea that a sonnet must look or sound a certain way. These sonnets speak the language of now, honouring the authentic, everyday and deeply human. Through discussion, examples and guided writing, participants will create their own modern sonnets that capture love, friendship, loss and connection, rooted in lived experience and personal journeys.

Info: How much do we know about our parents? How much do they know about us? In this workshop we'll read some poems about the hidden worlds of parents and their children, their secret and not-so-secret lives, exposing the joys and pains of this most primal of relationships. We'll experiment using different points of view and voices and work with other fun strategies to open up new spaces for poetic discovery.

Info: A photograph captures a moment, a particular location, a freeze frame within a narrative; through photographs we record significant occasions in our lives. Using the work of Eliza Stephens as a starting point, this poetry workshop considers the way we construct the family, relationships and memory, and considers how the poem acts in a similar way to the photograph — as a snapshot of time.

Info: How do you make a home, leave home, find a home? Join Amanda Hodgkinson in a poetry workshop open to all, looking at what we understand by the idea of homeliness. We will explore the rituals of belonging and the objects, the everyday furniture and fittings, that shape the places we call our own. Through a series of creative exercises, we will begin drafting our own poems and share stories of what it means to each and to all of us, to write home.

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Host or Publisher University of Suffolk