Short course

Containing the World in Words: Poetry and Joseph Cornell

Part one of a five part short course

Monday 29 June 2015 6.30 - 8.30pm

Belle Shenkman Room, The Keeper’s House, Royal Academy

£180.

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Joseph Cornell

Go to the exhibition

This five-week practical poetry writing course, led by Ted Hughes poetry prize-nominated Tamar Yoseloff, will explore the exhibition 'Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust' as an inspiration for new work.

Mondays 29 June and 6, 13, 20, 27 July; 6.30pm to 8.30pm each day.

Cornell is most widely known for his extraordinary "shadow boxes", which the critic Bonnie Costello describe as "physical poetry that invite the beholder to dwell in the work as he would in a poem."

During the first session, art historian Ben Street will place Cornell’s work into a biographical context; the subsequent four weeks will examine the poets who had a profound effect on Cornell, such as Emily Dickinson and Rainer Maria Rilke, and poets who are influenced by Cornell’s vision, such as Charles Simic, Frank O’Hara and Robert Pinsky.

Participants will also explore various poetic techniques and forms such as the collage poem, the cut-up and the sonnet, which emulate Cornell’s extraordinary practice. Overall, we will be inspired by what John Ashbery calls Cornell’s "delicately adjusted dialogue between the narrative and the visual" to write poems that attempt to condense and encapsulate the world. There will be an opportunity for participants to share new work produced during the course, and a selection of poems will also be published on the RA website.

Tamar Yoseloff is the author of four full collections of poetry. Her most recent publication is Formerly, a chapbook incorporating photographs by Vici MacDonald, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Ted Hughes Award. A Formula for Night: New and Selected Poems will be published by Seren in October 2015.

Includes private access to 'Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust' and wine reception.

Please note this is a five part course and days cannot be booked individually.

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