Short Short Poems: White Space and Silence (Masterclass)
Leave no word unturned
Living in this age of constant word bombardment, why not give your reader the gift of a bit more white space, a little more silence? A poem can be any length, from one line to a whole book. But there is something magical about the very short poem, under ten lines or so; while less is not necessarily more, it is definitely different. ‘The short poem, at its best, brings about an almost instantaneous surge of both understanding and sensation unavailble elsewhere’, writes Simon Armitage in the introduction to the Short and Sweet anthology. In this advanced Masterclass we will be exploring the tiniest of poems, written by poets from Raymond Carver, Emily Dickinson and Charles Causley to Rae Armantrout, Andrea Cohen and Selima Hill, alongside the shortest new offerings in today’s poetry journals. We will weigh the weight of each word, each breath and comma, to assess what needs to be said and what can remain between the lines, a useful skill for any writer. We will also create our own short poems, as well as exploring the effects of a constellation of poems on a page, and excavating our longer works-in-progress to see what treasures might be hidden inside.
Masterclasses are an expanded version of our Interactive and International courses, with a much deeper consideration of technical craft and critical theory. These 12 week courses (maximum 10 places) are for advanced students only, and fluency with poetic language and ideas will be assumed. There are no regular live chats and they are suitable for UK and International students.
Do you think there has there been a direct impact upon your mental health/well-being as a result of leaving behind science journalism in favour of fiction and poetry?You can read the full interview here: https://ignispoetrycollective.wordpress.com/blog/
Yes – I was much calmer when I was a science journalist! I had some sort of structure, I had deadlines, I was being paid for each article, and more than that I was leaving the house to meet fascinating people, learning about new technologies and breakthroughs, it was very stimulating, I loved that job. But writing fiction was my dream from childhood, and at a certain point there was no more ignoring that. When I started writing short stories, I also started experiencing great mood swings and anxiety, because I was delving inside myself, spending more time alone – and obviously no-one was waiting for me to produce anything, and the chances of getting paid for it were fairly slim.
'The first writing course I ever went on was actually a reading course. The library was my church as a child, but I'd never stopped to look at the page as a writer might'
TD: What gives micros their power? Language? Silence? Structure?
TH: As with any piece of great writing, this is hard to pin down, and I am an avoider of general pronouncements. I read around 1000 short and very short stories and poems, and non-fictions, every year, and I demand no less from a great piece of writing than to feel like I have been punched in the gut. Every piece that does that to me seems to do it in its own way, each writer makes it their own, which is the way it should be. I have a great love for a freshness of language, cliché turns me off, laziness of language will stop me in my tracks. Voice is what grabs me as a reader, the voice of a character or the narrator, in any piece of any length. The story itself, the plot, maybe be tiny and quiet, I never ask for enormous events to happen, there is great power in the small moments.
"What is a short story? As a writer, I’d rather ask: What can I make the short story do for me?"
When I started compiling my personal anthology, at first I thought it would be more of a Desert Island short stories, the ones that have stayed with me for years, the stories I use over and over again in workshops and which leave me reeling each time I read them (my requirement for a great short story). But then I stepped back and noticed a theme running through: Family. Not just the one we are born into, but the families we choose, be that in romantic relationships or friendships. This is something that crops up in my own work again and again – my first collection turned out (unplanned) to be about different ways to approach parenthood, or non-parenthood, and all my stories (as perhaps all stories of any length are) address the difficulties of relating to other people. These are 12 of my all-time favourites, varying in length from a few hundred words to a few thousand, and moving from the UK to America, New Zealand, Ireland and Israel. I would be very happy with them on a desert island – and they are all available to read online too. I hope you are left reeling from some of them too.
'Mother' by Grace Paley, First published in Later The Same Day (FSG, 1985), included in Sudden Fiction, edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas (Peregrine Smith, 1986), and available to read online here
This is one of the first very short stories I ever read, in an anthology of “sudden fiction” edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas and published by Norton in 1983, and I was knocked sideways by it. How is it possible to do all this in just over a page?...
You have from now until 1st December 2017 to send us a story up to 1000 words long. We challenge you to open your imagination to the strange ways of quantum particles and anticipate a new era of quantum technology
Mother Superior agrees to fund Emmylene’s equipment.
“Science is so soothing,” she says, her deep voice making it sound biblical.
Soothing? thinks Emmylene, almost tempted, once again, to blaspheme. Memories of frogs’ bodies slit open for prying fingers and the shrieking of one girl who vomited violently. Not so much, she thinks.
“Pouring from one test tube to the other, the elements of life,” says Mother Superior. Emmylene sees that faraway look in her eyes.
“Yes,” she says. “Soothing. I’ll go and place the order.”
“Thank you, Sister Morris. Bless your endeavours.” Mother Superior sits back behind her desk and Emmylene goes to phone the supplier.
"When asked to write a blog post about a poem from my collection Terms and Conditions, at first I didn’t know which one to pick. And what to say about it? But when I leafed (on my Kindle, electronic leafing) through the book, this one stood out, the longest title and the feeling behind it still so raw, so present. And about what came after, what I discovered.Read the rest of the blog post here...
‘After Seeing Monet's Waterlilies And Then Hearing the News’ is exactly what happened. Let’s examine this like a journalist (which I used to be): Where, What, Why, When, Who.
Where was I? In the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon.
What was I doing there? I was in Portland taking a poetry course (with Sharon Olds. Yes, SHARON OLDS. I wanted only to sit at her feet. Oh my.)
Why the Art Museum? A few of us, my new classmates and their friends, decided to take time off, go into the city, see some art.
When? Now this is the question...
