Subbed In Workshop: Writing Poems that aren’t ‘Poems’ with Holly Isemonger

subbed in presents a writing workshop with Holly Isemonger: 

✨ Writing Poems that aren’t ‘Poems’✨

There’s an old saying that goes: you can lead a horse to poetry but you can’t make it stanza. The aim of Holly Isemonger’s workshop is to take poetry off its lyrical high-horse and make it funny, sad, banal, and playful.

This workshop will include learning how to use erasure, ekphrasis, constraints, google translate and other online text manipulators to create poems. Language is communication. How do we write what we want to say? How do these forms reflect the way we engage with language and media in our everyday life? In the workshop, Holly will guide you through creating poems using various experimental techniques. Furthermore, exploring how we can we use these methods to write poems that ‘say something’ in an original and meaningful way.

Using experimental techniques and exercises, we will craft poetry from surprising places: from a Simpsons script, an awful Miranda Devine article, a film, a constraint, an email, tweets, etc.

Let’s ~ chill~ and write some poems 😎

Date: Saturday 20th May 2017, 1-3pm.

Location: Frontyard Projects, 228 Illawarra Rd, Marrickville, NSW 2204.

It is free to participate but numbers are limited (20 person capacity). Bookings essential.

Drinks and refreshments will be provided.

Please bring:

• A phone or a laptop (bringing solely a pen and paper is not advised).
• 2 chunks of text from any source: one that you love and one that you hate; e.g. an excerpt from the novel, ‘Transit’ by Rachel Cusk, an excerpt from Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, E.L James, or Ted Hughes, or a poorly written review, or a particularly troll-esque comment from a message board. It can be anything.
• A poem you have written that you aren’t happy with or too embarrassed to share.
• A poem you've read and feel you don't ‘get’, or are confused by, or a poem you like but don’t know why.

Holly Isemonger lives in Sydney. She has been published in Shabby Doll House, Voiceworks, Clinic, and Seizure. Her writing has been featured in exhibitions for SPUR Publication at Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh and Tate Britain. She is assistant editor at The Bohemyth and studies at Western Sydney University. In 2017, she won the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize. Holly can be found on twitter @hisemonger

http://subbed.in

https://www.frontyardprojects.org

This project is supported by the Writing NSW Grants Program, a devolved funding program administered by the NSW Writers’ Centre on behalf of the NSW Government and Arts NSW.