Red Room poetry

Celebrate Poetry Month 2021 with a workshop led by award-winning author and poet Tony Birch.

Here is Tony’s description of the workshop in his own words:

‘My love of reading and writing poetry is guided by a lifelong attraction to the seemingly simple and unadorned. To be direct, I enjoy poems that hit me emotionally on the first reading; poems with heart and generosity. Even more so, when I return to favourite poems, I love the experience of learning more, of the poem whispering a new meaning to me that I had previously missed, running through seemingly simple lines and stanzas. I will be running a two-hour poetry workshop that will encourage students to strip back an idea, a concept for a poem to a few words and lines that allow thoughts, ideas and concepts the space to breath and quietly make their way in the world. We will introduce the occasional creative prop; a photograph, an object, possibly a bar to two of music. While the subject matter may be ‘heavy’ or ‘light’ in a poem, I want us to consider the potential of decluttering the poem and hearing each individual note that is being struck. As the wonderful Alice Walker wrote, we can work equally with fists as well as hands.’