The Thingness of Things: finding meaning in the everyday
To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions. Robert Irwin
Image credit: Luca Laurence
Objects can tell us a great deal about people, places, our histories, experiences, tastes and styles - they can be symbolic, functional, speak to our cultures and identities, hold sentimental and emotional significance and be valuable to us in so much more than economic terms. Writing about objects can help make the ineffable or indescribable material.
In this day-long workshop, you will be invited to explore the rich, often overlooked, narratives embedded in the mundane items that populate our lives. Using observation, reflection, and creative prompts, you will see the world around you with fresh eyes and articulate the hidden poetry in the everyday.
By the end of the workshop, you will have:
· developed an appreciation for the aesthetic and emotional potential of everyday objects;
· considered how you can hone your observational skills to notice details and stories in ordinary items; and
· created original poems inspired by personal and shared objects.
The workshop is suitable for all writers, including beginners.
Please bring along an object (or think of at least one before you come) that you might like to write about.
Further information
This workshop has been organised by Caroline Shaw and Katie Lloyd-Nunn, as a creative outcome of the very successful Stroud Poetry Course earlier this year. If you have any enquiries about this workshop, please get in touch with them directly.
Caroline Shaw carolineshaw@clara.co.uk 07837387299
Katie Lloyd-Nunn katiematey333@hotmail.com 07899054329
Tutor
Venue & fees
The workshop will take place in the Common Room at St. Luke’s on Cainscross Road in Stroud, Gloucestershire (GL5 4EX).
Saturday 16th November, 10.30am to 3.30pm.
Cost: £45 full price, £35 concessions (book your space below)
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects. W. H. Auden
Your tutor: JLM Morton
Winner of the Laurie Lee and Geoffrey Dearmer prizes, JLM Morton’s work has been published in Poetry Review, Rialto, Magma and elsewhere. Her first collection, Red Handed, is out with Broken Sleep (2024). She’s currently poet in residence at Sladebank Woods, a semi-urban woodland sandwiched between a housing estate and the ‘National Landscape’ of the Cotswold Hills.
Juliette is the Co-Director of Dialect.
Image credit: Rabi Madaci