The Climate of the Poem - a poetry writing course with Sean O’Brien

Sunday 14 September to Saturday 20 September 2008  -  FULL ( 2009 course details)

This course is aimed at gaining greater understanding and control of the needs and nature of the poems you're writing - lyric, dramatic, elegiac, comic, long, short et cetera. What does a poem need to sustain its particular life, and how can this be provided? The course requirements are curiosity, imagination and a liking for discussion.

A note from Sean O’Brien:
‘In this course we'll look and listen afresh at the poems we write, putting aside habit and expectation in order to extend the possibilities of our work. Workshops, readings, discussion and personal tuition will all form part of the experience. Members of the course should bring poems, enthusiasm and an open mind.’

There will be a maximum of 12 participants.

Please bring plenty of writing materials, notebooks and loose sheets of A4 paper, and a laptop computer if you have one. As well as your own poems, bring a few poems or a book by a published poet or two whose work you find interesting, as there’ll be an opportunity to include in some of the evening readings poems by others as well as your own.

About Sean:
Sean is a multiple award-winning poet and a very experienced writing tutor. He is also a critic, playwright, broadcaster, anthologist and editor. He grew up in Hull and now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. His students there range in age from 18 to 80 and he is considered a thoughtful, responsive, approachable and dedicated teacher. He has also acted as a mentor for individual poets outside the university and is particularly adept at helping poets to prepare a first collection for publication. He has taught on many courses for the Arvon Foundation and the London-based Poetry School, and has tutored abroad in a number of countries including Denmark, Japan and Mauritius.

Here’s just a sample of his published works and prizes. Sean’s Cousin Coat: Selected Poems 1976-2001 was published by Picador in 2002. His six individual collections of poetry have all won awards, most recently The Drowned Book, which won both the 2007 Forward and T S Eliot Prizes, the first time any book has won both awards in the same year. In 2006, one poem from the collection had also won a Forward Prize, in memory of Michael Donaghy, for best individual poem published in the UK that year. Sean was the 2007 recipient of the Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award.

His book of essays on contemporary poetry, The Deregulated Muse (Bloodaxe), was published in 1998, as was his acclaimed anthology The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland After 1945 (Picador). His new verse version of Dante’s Inferno was published by Picador in 2006. Three of his plays are published in the Methuen Modern Drama series.

As a writing tutor, Sean’s concern is not to encourage you to write as he does, but to see ways of improving your poems to make the best of their particular qualities. For confirmation of this, you need only flick through 10 Hallam Poets (Mews Press, 2005), the anthology of poetry by ten students of Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University, where Sean taught before moving to Newcastle University. These are poets with markedly distinct styles, strengths and interests. All were tutored by Sean, but none is his poetic clone. Five of the ten have since gone on to publish a first collection.

Much has been made of the serious and grim aspects of Sean’s work, but it can also be hilariously funny. These are traits of the poet too. Participants on the course will find they experience the first and the last, but none of the second. This promises to be a week in which everyone will work hard and laugh a lot in beautiful surroundings. The intention is that you’ll leave with a sense of achievement, having enjoyed yourself in the process.

Course structure

Arrive Sunday for welcome cocktails and dinner on the terrace.

Monday to Friday

8-9 a.m. Breakfast buffet

10 – 11 a.m. Group workshop and discussion, part 1

11.00 Coffee break

11.30 – 12.30 Group workshop and discussion, part 2

12.30 – 2.30 Lunch time buffet (outside when weather permits)

2.30 – 5.00 Tutorial, work time or free time. Each participant will have at least an hour of the tutor’s exclusive time during the week in individual afternoon tutorials, as well as on other, unscheduled occasions as the opportunity arises.

5-6.30 At the end of each day the tutor and the participants will come together on the terrace of the Château for readings, to review and discuss the day’s work and of course to sample the local wines and aperitifs.

8.00 Dinner

Fee £550 all inclusive for the week in a shared room (Excluding flights)

£60 supplement for single room

More about Sean O'Brien

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