From Dabbling to Diving: Writing Poetry with Mark Granier

Course Summary

Patrick Kavanagh once wrote: ‘I dabbled in verse and it became my life.’ Have you ever dabbled and wanted to take it further? Have you read a poem that moved or excited you and thought to yourself: ‘That’s amazing! How is it done, or could I do it?’ Or have you ever wondered what the purpose of rhyme is, and why some poets still use it (and many don’t); or what makes unrhymed poetry different from prose, and why line-breaks are important (except when they’re not)?

If you’re a curious beginner who enjoys talking about poetry, or someone who has written (and maybe even published) and is now looking for direction and feedback from others at a similar stage, this course is for you.

Course Outline:

Apart from the breaking into the blank page, with triggering exercises, etc., this course will encourage questions and ideas, and invite you to immerse yourselves in an eight-week conversation about poetry. You will look at a number of poems by published poets whose methods and techniques will be discussed. The emphasis will be on having an adventure with language. Topics covered will include imagery, metaphor and the prose poem; also some of the oldest poetic devices that are still in use (such as riddles, anaphora and parallelism) and forms such as the sonnet and haiku. Advice will be given on publishing (online and in journals) and a short bibliography of useful books/anthologies. But it should be noted that the emphasis will be on having an adventure with language (in other words pleasure, or simply fun).

Mark Granier has an MA in Poetry from Lancaster University, and has been teaching poetry and creative writing for The Irish Writers’ Centre’s New Irish Communities project and University College Dublin’s Lifelong Learning Department for many years. His awards include the 1997 New Writer Prize, many Arts Council Bursaries, The Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize and two Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowships.  His fifth collection, Ghostlight: New & Selected Poems, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2017. He is currently completing a sixth collection, Everything You Always Wanted To Know.