Poetry Studies booking now:
February 2025
Event Details
William Blake, The Tyger, Creative Commons The Tyger, first published in 1794, is
Event Details
The Tyger, first published in 1794, is the product of a revolutionary age. Societal transformations in Europe and North America were radically altering industry, statehood, philosophy, law and religion. In the vanguard of the Romantic movement that was to produce a generation of poets including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats and Clare, Blake was a master of the lyric form, finding connections between the natural world and the introspective workings of the heart and mind.
For many readers The Tyger is also woven into their earliest childhoods, one of the first poems they were introduced to, heard before it was read. Whether The Tyger is part of your personal canon or completely new, as we explore the lyricism, images and Blake’s unique voice we will uncover new and unexpected meanings through reading and discussing the poem.
JOINING DETAILS:
- Single meeting study facilitated by Caroline Hammond
- Tuesday 4 February 2025, 6.00 – 8.00 pm GMT
- £30 (includes background materials and opening notes)
Organizer
Time
4 February 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)
Location
VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM
Event Details
Photo of Paul Celan, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Arnica,
Event Details
Arnica, eyebright, the
draft from the well with the
star-die on top,in the
Hütte,
Thus begins Paul Celan’s poem Todtnauberg, setting the scene for his meeting with the philosopher Martin Heidegger.
This short poem is Celan’s record of his meeting at the philosopher’s Black Forest retreat in Todtnauberg in 1967. The two men were admirers of each other’s work, though on Celan’s side the admiration was fraught. Celan was a survivor of the European Shoah, carried out by the Third Reich, that claimed the life of both his parents. Living most of his life in France, Celan composed his poetry in German (his mother tongue and the language of his beloved mother), utilising the language that was also infused with the Reich, and which he called “the deathbringing speech” to work through the individual and collective trauma of the Shoah.
Heidegger, one of the monumental figures in European continental philosophy of the twentieth century, had a well known affiliation with the Nazi party which he never denied, redressed, or ever spoke about publicly. Their meeting, not surprisingly, attracted much scrutiny.
The poem, a chronicle of that meeting, closely follows the inscription that Celan left in Heidegger’s visitor’s book: “In the Hütte, with the view from the star in the well, with the hope of a coming word in the heart” (“Ins Hüttenbuch, mit dem Blick auf den Brunnenstern, mit einer Hoffnung auf eines kommendes Wort im Herzen”).
There are many ways to read, interpret and translate the poem, a poem about silence and the hope for words. We will read the poem together, many times, hoping ourselves to come to an understanding and interpretation of this very moving and concise work.
JOINING DETAILS:
- Single meeting study led by Desma Lawrence and Emilia Steuerman
- Wednesday 12 February 2025, 12.00 – 2.00 pm (UK)
- £40 for single meeting with two facilitators
- We will provide the German text with English Translation(s) and background notes on both Celan and Heidegger.
Time
12 February 2025 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm(GMT+00:00)
Location
VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM
Event Details
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash “This literature
Event Details
“This literature – which to us can sometimes seem difficult, exotic, highbrow, remote – is the product of a certain sensibility and a particular context. The idea of these sessions is to find little doors through which to step into that world and find ways to relate to it through the poetry and human artefacts as representations of that time.”
Vivien Kogut
The eighth century English monk Bede wrote a famous parable in which man’s life is compared to the flight of a sparrow crossing a warm hall on a dark, wet night: the sparrow comes “from winter into winter again”, his time in light and warmth lasting but the “blink of an eye”. Eight hundred years later, English poets believed they could trick all-devouring time through the power of words.
And today, another five centuries later, what does poetry tell us about time? And what different ‘times’ do we find in poetry? Can Medieval and Renaissance literature speak to our own perception of time? And what can objects tell us about our relationship with words across time?
This study invites readers to dive into poems and objects from the past in search of dialogues around time and literature. Focusing on the experience of reading poetry from the 10th to the 17th century we will try to rethink our notions of brevity and eternity, of rush and delay, of beginnings and endings.
Each of four sessions will focus on a different genre of poetry expressing ‘time’:
1. Old English elegies
“Thus this middle-earth droops and decays every single day;
and so a man cannot become wise, before he has weathered
his share of winters in this world”Anonymous, The Wanderer
2. Old English riddles
“It was swift in its going:
Faster than birds it flew through the sky”Anonymous, Riddle 51
3. Medieval ballads
“O’er his white bones, when they are bare,
The wind shall blow for evermore.“Anonymous, The Two Corbies
4. Elizabethan poems
“Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.“Edmund Spenser, Amoretti: LXXV
JOINING DETAILS:
- Four meeting study on Zoom led by Vivien Kogut
- Thursdays, 6.30 – 8.30 pm (UK)
- 13, 20, 27 February and 6 March
- £120 for four meetings, including notes and resources
Organizer
Time
13 February 2025 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm(GMT+00:00)
Location
VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM
Future Event Times in this Repeating Event Series
Event Details
This is the first in a series of single session studies on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Participants are welcome to join as few or many sessions
Event Details
This is the first in a series of single session studies on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Participants are welcome to join as few or many sessions as they please. The second session can be booked here.
‘There is not a part of the writings of this Poet wherein is found in equal compass a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed.’
William Wordsworth on Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Shakespeare’s sonnets have inspired, fascinated and disturbed readers for centuries. Full of mystery and imagination, they dazzle us even as they drive us mad: Who is the fair youth to whom so many of these sonnets are addressed? Who is the dark lady, the complex beloved of so many others? Who is the rival poet and what power does he possess? Are these lyric expressions of tortured love – among other themes – the key to understanding the mysterious life of Shakespeare, or are they not autobiographical at all?
Through close analysis and hands-on interpretive work, we will examine Shakespeare’s kaleidoscopic exploration of his speaker’s romantic and tortured feelings and experiences.
We are offering these self-contained, individual studies of Shakespeare’s sonnets in a workshop style setting. Over time we will cover all of the 154 sonnets that comprise Shakespeare’s celebrated sequence. Participants are invited to join as few or many sessions as they please.
JOINING DETAILS:
- Session 1: Sonnets 1-4, facilitated by Julie Sutherland (on Zoom)
- Friday 28 February, 3.00 – 5.00 pm (UK)
- £25 for two-hour study
- Before the session, Julie Sutherland will send links to online versions or attach specific copies for discussion. It is highly recommended that you print these off before joining this hands-on session. If you have a printed edition, please also have it ready so we can consider variations between texts. Have a notebook and pencil on hand as well!
Organizer
Time
28 February 2025 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm(GMT+00:00)
Location
VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM
March 2025
Event Details
St Lucy by Cosimo Roselli, Florence c. 1470, via Wikimedia Commons Born in
Event Details
Born in 1572, the poet and Anglican cleric John Donne is now considered the major metaphysical poet of his time. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that studies being, identity and change, space and time, and the relationship between mind and matter. Extended metaphors known as conceits are one of the hallmarks of metaphysical poetry – unconventional, logically complex or surprising comparisons which challenge us intellectually rather than appeal to our emotions. John Donne employed conceits to explore the relationship between the sensory and the abstract, using the unlikeness of the two things compared to surprise and hold the reader’s attention. Donne often used scientific and technological advances of his day as a source for his conceits.
In A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day John Donne describes a speaker’s reaction to the death of a woman he loves. Referencing the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, he captures the overwhelming sense of bereavement in one of the most passionate depictions of love and loss in poetry.
While St Lucy’s Day can seem complex and difficult on first reading a close examination of the text reveals a poem of striking intensity and beauty.
JOINING DETAILS:
- Single session study facilitated by Caroline Hammond
- Wednesday 5 March, 6.00 – 8.00 pm
- £30 to include background materials and opening notes
- The poem can be found on the Poetry Foundation website here and in collections of John Donne’s work.
Organizer
Time
5 March 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)
Location
VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM
Event Details
Photo by Derek Braithwaite on Unsplash “the best and most representative
Event Details
“the best and most representative American poet of our time.”
Harold Bloom on Wallace Stevens
For most of his working life, Wallace Stevens was the Vice President of the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, composing his poems on the way to and from the office and in the evenings. At the same time, he led something of a double life, with friends among the literary community in Greenwich village including Marianne Moore and E.E. Cummings.
His poetry in concerned with the transformative power of the imagination, with influences including the English Romantics and the French Symbolists. He is a master stylist, paying great attention to vocabulary and form. He also examines the notion of poetry itself, reflecting on its meaning and purpose as a reflection of objective reality. Published in 1923, Thirteen Way of Looking at a Blackbird explores these themes as well as delighting generations of readers with its beautiful language and images.
Over the course of two hours, we will work towards a deeper understanding of this exquisite poem through repeated readings, analysis and discussion.
JOINING DETAILS:
- Single meeting study on Zoom, facilitated by Caroline Hammond
- Wednesday 19 March, 6.00–8.00 pm (UK)
- £30 to include background materials and opening notes
- The poem can be found on the Poetry Foundation website here and in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, ISBN-13: 978-0679726692
Organizer
Time
19 March 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)
Location
VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM
Event Details
This is the second in a series of single session studies on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Participants are
Event Details
This is the second in a series of single session studies on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Participants are welcome to join as few or many sessions as they please.
‘There is not a part of the writings of this Poet wherein is found in equal compass a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed.’
William Wordsworth on Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Shakespeare’s sonnets have inspired, fascinated and disturbed readers for centuries. Full of mystery and imagination, they dazzle us even as they drive us mad: Who is the fair youth to whom so many of these sonnets are addressed? Who is the dark lady, the complex beloved of so many others? Who is the rival poet and what power does he possess? Are these lyric expressions of tortured love – among other themes – the key to understanding the mysterious life of Shakespeare, or are they not autobiographical at all?
Through close analysis and hands-on interpretive work, we will examine Shakespeare’s kaleidoscopic exploration of his speaker’s romantic and tortured feelings and experiences.
We are offering these self-contained, individual studies of Shakespeare’s sonnets in a workshop style setting. Over time we will cover all of the 154 sonnets that comprise Shakespeare’s celebrated sequence. Participants are invited to join as few or many sessions as they please.
JOINING DETAILS:
- Session 2: Sonnets 5-8, facilitated by Julie Sutherland (on Zoom)
- Friday 28 March, 6.00 – 8.00 pm (UK) please note that the UK remains on GMT until 30 March but in North America clocks will already have moved forward by one hour
- £25 for two-hour study
- Before the session, Julie Sutherland will send links to online versions or attach specific copies for discussion. It is highly recommended that you print these off before joining this hands-on session. If you have a printed edition, please also have it ready so we can consider variations between texts. Have a notebook and pencil on hand as well!
Organizer
Time
28 March 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT+00:00)
Location
VIRTUAL - ON ZOOM
Past Poetry Studies:
Sorry, no posts were found.
