Finding Self Expression
Finding Self Expression; How to be a Versatile Writer is a 6 week workshop with Pele Cox.
Poetry voices the raw language of the imagination, but it also improves analytical thinking and communication skills. To write well, we must learn to read well, and this helps us to listen better too.
Taking place in the upstairs space at Gather, participants are invited to find their self expression and versatility in writing.
£55 for all six sessions - 6-8pm on a Tuesday for six weeks.
SESSION OUTLINES:
3 September 2024 - “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”
A warm-up session to identify individual potential and dispel unfounded fears. Participants bring a piece of literature they like for discussion. They then read some “nonsense poetry,” followed by speedwriting exercises to “excerpt” from the flow of the imagination.
10 September 2024- “Speak the Speech, I pray you”
What can we learn from examples in Shakespeare of motivational speech? Reading poetry aloud, creating pauses and emphasis, learning rhythms. Rousing metaphor.
17 September 2024 - What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Analysing love poems removes inhibitions about expression, through the language of trust and intimacy. It increases the range of communication and capacity for empathy.
24 September 2024 - Epic Tales
Epic tells stories on the most heroic scale. It contains all the themes of poetry: the travels and travails of the individualist or the team-player, conflict, defeat, victory, and apotheosis.
1 October 2024 - The Sonnet
The sonnet has produced some of poetry’s most enduring soundbites. How do poets contain and focus their most expansive visions within the restrictive formula of the sonnet?
8 October 2024 - A “Rattle-Bag”
When Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney decided to co-edit an anthology of poems they called it the “rattle-bag.” This session is a celebration. Participants bring and share aloud the works they have learned, loved, and written.
This writing workshop is open to all, from beginners to those of you who are already in the process. We are opening this series to adults only at this point and the only materials you will need are a pen and paper.
Free places via our bursary scheme
Gather offers 2 free bursary places per workshop and would love to hear from anyone who is keen to claim a free place on Pele's course. Email hello@morethanacowork.com to find out more on our bursary offer, just let us know what workshop you're interested in.
Pele Cox
Pele is a poet, performance artist, and film maker. She has been poet in Residence at TATE, John Murray, Keats-Shelley House, British School at Rome and Royal Academy of Arts. During the Covid-19 lockdown she made and streamed her first short,Lift Me Up, I Am Dying (on the death of John Keats), which was reviewed in the FT Arts section. Damian Lewis and Nicholas Rowe starred. Her next film, Dreamboat commemorates Shelley and has been filmed in Venice and London. Vincent and the Poets was performed in February 2022 at the Courtauld Institute to coincide with the exhibition Van Gogh’s Self Portraits. Her work has also been performed at BAFTA, Keats-Shelley House, John Murray, British School at Rome, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Todi Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Bradford Literature Festival, and the Villa Wolkonsky. Her work has been featured and reviewed in the FT, Sunday Times Magazine, Sunday Times Culture section, RA magazine, TATE, The Oldie, The London Magazine, and The Guardian.