Bantry / Sunday 7 – Saturday 13 July - West Cork Music

5-Day WorkshopsPoetry Workshop – Advancedwith RUTH PADEL / €160Ruth Padel is returning to Bantry, by popular demand,and this year her course is aimed at advanced poetswho want to get their work to the next stage. Ruth willconcentrate on writing exercises to engender new poems,on poetry surgeries – to explore where a poem is notworking and why – and on reading contemporary poemswith a writer’s eye and ear. Bring problem work of yourown, and come prepared to write a lot more!Ruth Padel is a prize-winning poet, Fellow of the RoyalSociety of Literature and presenter of BBC Radio 4’spioneer programme Poetry Workshop. Her books onreading poetry – 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, The Poemand the Journey, and Silent Letters of the Alphabet – areperennially popular and her own collections includeRembrandt Would Have Loved You, Voodoo Shop and TheSoho Leopard, all short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Prize,and Darwin: A Life in Poems, short-listed for the CostaPoetry Award. The Mara Crossing, Ruth Padel’s new bookof mixed poems and prose, is about migration; how cellsmigrate in our bodies, how animals, birds and peoplemigrate across the globe. “A prodigy, a book of wonders.”(Independent).From top: Ruth PadelJames Harpur (photo: Lena Cronin)Poetry Workshop – All Levelswith James Harpur / €160‘You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination isout of focus’ Mark Twain. Imagination lies at the heartof poetry, whether in the process of image making, or inaccessing the thoughts, ideas and emotions that lie in theuncharted oceans of the unconscious.In a friendly, focused atmosphere, we shall explore theworld of imagination and how poetry honours it withthe best words in the best order. Our sessions will includerelaxed warm-up exercises, lively discussions on particularthemes, reading classic and contemporary poems, andgetting down to some serious writing. The course is opento all, from beginners to those further along the poeticjourney.James Harpur, an experienced workshop leader hashad five poetry collections published by Anvil Press. Hislatest book, Angels and Harvesters (2012), was a PoetryBook Society Recommendation and The Dark Age (2007)won the Michael Hartnett Award. He has led poetryworkshops at the Arvon Foundation and has been invitedto the Universities of Galway, Trinity College, Dublin,Lancaster and the West of England as a Visiting Writer ontheir MA courses in creative writing. He is also a poetryeditor, adjudicator (including of the 2012 Irish TimesPoetry Award) and broadcaster.34