LOCATION
BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME
ABOUT THE EVENT
TIME
Friday - 3:30pm
PRICE
£24.50 / £18.50
Shame has always had the potential to shape the lyric tradition, to produce poems more ambitious and daring for their uncertainty of self.
“My hunch is that there’s something about working in poetry (above all in lyric writing) which is inherently bound up with shame. Indeed, shame may act as a driving ‘motor’ of lyric.” Denise Riley
Over the course of the 20th century, lyric poetry underwent a kind of crisis of identity, sparked by the American academy’s incremental disdain for what were termed ‘epiphany poems’. As a consequence of this scathing diagnosis, much lyric poetry became more self-aware, more self-critical, more ashamed of itself.
That said, for those poets who have spent their careers writing on the fringes, shame was not a new feature, for shame has always had the potential to shape the lyric tradition, to produce poems more ambitious and daring for their uncertainty of self.
At a historical moment in which we have much to feel ashamed of, it is vital that poetry reflect the messy contradictions of existence. In this workshop, writers will read and discuss some of the poems most emblematic of the lyric shame movement, including work by Sylvia Plath, Claudia Rankine, Maggie Nelson, and Robert Hass.
There will also be writing exercises designed to harness negative affect in ways that can render the resulting poems more powerful.