Poetry Studio: PERSONA Retelling myth & fairytale

For the poet Ocean Vuong, linking myth and autobiography opened up new possibilities when writing his debut collection, ‘Night Sky with Exit Wounds’:

I was interested in writing the history of the Viet Nam war and also the history of the body – of a queer American body – as a mythology… and I think what that offered me is that I got to tell these stories that perhaps I have not witnessed myself, through a poetical re-imagination, without claiming witness as my own, without appropriating the witness and the stories of some of the survivors of this war – a war that I did not live through.

In this Studio session, through reading, writing and discussion, we will explore ways in which we can collaborate with classic literatures to speak to and expand the stories of our own experience.

We will take inspiration from the work of poets including Alice Oswald, Michael Longley, Carol Ann Duffy, Louise Glück, Ocean Vuong and Marie Howe.

About the Studio

The Poetry Studio is a hospitable online space for new and experienced poets to come together to read poems in English and in translation to inspire writing in session. Informal discussion on a theme provides an opportunity to reflect on individual poetics, and structured writing exercises are designed to seed new poems.

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.

Focussing on the experience in the moment — creative process rather than product — there is no element of critique. Sessions take place on Zoom and last three hours with short breaks. Places are limited to keep the group small.

“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

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 'Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology', 'Mapping the Future: The Complete Works Poets', ‘The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write’, and others.

Shazea has taught with The Poetry School, Arvon, The Poetry Society, 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.

A Complete Works alumna, Shazea is a senior writer 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.