Poetry Studio: NEGATIVE CAPABILITY revisited

Poets through time have understood that it is in not-knowing and questioning, that we tap into the richest possibilities for poetry.

Negative Capability is the fertile creative state Keats described as "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts".

And in his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke urged him to

...try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

We will read poems by Nathalie Diaz, Joan Kwon Glass, Victoria Chang, Pablo Neruda, Gertrude Stein, Paul Celan and others, and write our own poems in response.

Note: This is a repeat of a 2023 session

About the Studio

The Poetry Studio is a hospitable online space where we read poems in English and in translation, followed by informal discussion to reflect on our individual poetics, and structured writing exercises to seed new poems.

Focussing on the experience in the moment - creative process rather than product - there is no element of critique.

“The poetry studio session worked really well for me - the structure, the focus, the carefully selected poems, and the time to write and share. The space you created enabled me to write something I'd been wanting to for some time.” - Claire

Sessions take place on Zoom and last 3 hours with short breaks. Places are limited to 14.

You will come away having experienced poems by poets familiar and new from around the world, as well as:

• the beginnings of 2-3 new poems
• takeaways for further reading and writing
• strategies to develop your work further

About Shazea Quraishi

Shazea is a Pakistani-born Canadian poet, translator and educator based in London.

In her latest book of poetry, The Glimmer (Bloodaxe Books, 2022), set in an artists' colony in Mexico, a taxidermist and other artists reflect on the impulse to make work and meaning in a world where value is increasingly monetised.

As we are told... 'the form is always the measure of obsession' and this is a good summary of the emotional core of this remarkable book. In order to write, to sing, to taxidermy, we must have obsession. This is a poetry collection as a creative retreat that I didn't want to end. - Ellora Sutton in Mslexia

Other books include The Taxidermist (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), The Art of Scratching(Bloodaxe Books, 2015) and The Courtesans Reply (flipped eye publishing, 2012). Shazea's poems have appeared in UK and US publications including The Guardian, The Financial Times, Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation & The Hudson Review, and anthologized in 'The Mighty Stream: Poems in celebration of Martin Luther King', and ‘The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write’, among others.

As a tutor/mentor, Shazea has worked with the Poetry School, Arvon, Translators in Schools, English PEN, Exiled Writers and more. She has designed and delivered poetry courses at undergraduate level, and led poetry workshops in adult education, prisons, refugee centres, festivals, theatres and museums. She is an on-going artist in residence with Living Words, an arts and literature organisation that works in creative partnership with marginalised people impacted by a dementia or ongoing mental health concerns.

A Complete Works alumna, Shazea is a trustee on the board of English PEN, and on the committee of the Poetry and Spoken Word Group of the Society of Authors.

www.shazeaquraishi.com