Poetry and Surrealism with Lianne O’Hara
Info
Date: October 16, 2024
Time: 6.30 pm - 8.30 pm
Duration: 6 weeks
Level: Beginner | Emerging |
Cost: €165 (€150 Members)
Location: Irish Writers Centre
This course will take place in person on Wednesdays (six sessions in total).
Course Summary
A lobster telephone, a melting clock, hands with eyes, and lots of eggs. These are your ingredients: now, write a poem.
In this six-week course, participants will be introduced to Surrealism and a number of its key artists. Surrealism, like poetry, employs juxtaposition and ‘strange bedfellows’ to convey a particular idea or feeling. Surrealist film, paintings, prose, drawings, and dreams will be used as points of departure to explore the possibilities of imagery and language in poetry. Participants will learn how to find inspiration in unexpected corners, experiment with different writing techniques, and generate a number of new and original poems.
Course Outline
Week 1 – Introduction: André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto and Dada Poetry
Week 2 – Oh Melted Clock, Oh Razored Eye: Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel
Week 3 – My Heart Would Have the Shape of A Shoe: Federico García Lorca
Week 4 – I’ll Turn Myself Into a Horse: Leonora Carrington
Week 5 – Disturbing Presence: Remedios Varo
Week 6 – The Broken Body, Monkey, Deer: Frida Kahlo
Each week participants will have the opportunity to share their work for discussion and constructive feedback. Participants are also encouraged to actively contribute materials – if you find an article or artwork of interest during the week, please feel free to bring it to the workshop.
Course Outcomes
At the end of this course, participants will have learned new ways of accessing ideas, engaging with other artforms in their writing practice, and ‘making’ poems. Participants will be familiar with the key concepts and artists of the Surrealist movement, and will have explored different media and writing techniques to generate new, original works of poetry.
Lianne O’Hara is a poet and playwright. She is the recipient of the 2024 Mairtín Crawford Award for Poetry. Her writing is published in Winter Papers, The Rialto, Arc Poetry Magazine, The London Magazine, Abridged, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, and elsewhere. Her play FLUFF had a sell out run at the 2022 Dublin Fringe Festival. Her new play BABY premieres at The New Theatre 17-21 September.
Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email info@irishwriterscentre.ie.
