Clare Pollard’s sixth collection of poetry, Lives of the Female Poets, will be published by Bloodaxe in 2025. She was Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation for five years and is currently Artistic Director of the Winchester Poetry Festival. In 2022, her poem 'Pollen' – first published in Bad Lilies – was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her translations include Ovid’s Heroines, which she toured as a one-woman show with Jaybird Live Literature. Clare also works across other literary genres. Her play The Weather was performed at The Royal Court Theatre. She has written a non-fiction title, Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind Childrens’ Picture Books (Penguin, 2020), her first children’s novel, The Untameables (The Emma Press, 2024), and two adult novels, Delphi (Penguin, 2023) and The Modern Fairies (Penguin, 2024). She has recently been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Poetry: The art of voice(s)
This course is now fully booked – If you’d like to be added to the waiting list for any cancellations, please contact us on 01766 522 811 / tynewydd@literaturewales.org
In ‘The Art of Voice’ the poet Tony Hoagland notes that ‘voice embodies, not any set of particular facts, but the presence of a self, a personality or a sensibility’. Over a week of guided workshops led by award-winning poets Clare Pollard and Owen Sheers and individual writing time, we will look at the ‘I’ in lyric and confessional poetry, focusing on areas such as idiolect, style, performance and the question of ‘authenticity’. We will also think about the poetic ‘other’, and how to create unique voices for characters, with reference to dramatic monologues, verbatim-inspired film poems and verse-drama. Expect one-to-one tutorials with tailored feedback on your work, lively group workshops, original exercises and prompts to get you thinking and writing in new ways and if you wish, plenty of supportive opportunities to read aloud.
Tutors
Clare Pollard
Owen Sheers
Owen Sheers is an award-winning poet, author and playwright. Twice-winner of Wales Book of the Year Award he was the recipient of the 2016 St Davids Award for Culture and the 2018 Wilfred Owen Poetry Award. His poetry publications include The Blue Book (Seren Books, 2000), Skirrid Hill (Seren Books, 2005) and Pink Mist (Faber & Faber, 2014), which was adapted for the stage by Bristol Old Vic and selected for The Guardian’s top ten plays of the year. His BAFTA-nominated BBC film-poem The Green Hollow also won three BAFTA Cymru awards, including for Best Writer. To Provide All People, his most recent film-poem, was broadcast to mark the 70th anniversary of the NHS. His other dramatic work includes The Passion and Mametz, both for National Theatre of Wales, and The Two Worlds of Charlie F., winner of the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression award. The author of two novels, Resistance and I Saw A Man (both published in 2016 by Faber & Faber), his latest TV drama, The Trick, about the 2009 ‘Climategate events’ was nominated for a BAFTA Cymru best film award. A former NYPL Cullman Fellow, he is Cennad of WalesPENCymru, a Professor of Creative Writing at Swansea University and co-founder of Black Mountains College, a new college focused on systems change and sustainable futures. His next novel will be published by Faber & Faber in 2028.
Guest Reader
Dzifa Benson (Digital)
Dzifa Benson was born in London to Ghanaian parents and grew up in Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. She is now based in London and is an award-winning artist whose multimedia work intersects literature, science, theatre, art, the body, ritual, performance and immersive technologies. Her work has been awarded a fellowship from the Jerwood Foundation and shortlisted for the James Berry Poetry Prize and Bridport Poetry Prize. Dzifa’s arts criticism covering theatre, literature and music appears in the The Financial Times, The Telegraph and Poetry Review among other publications and she has held poetry, curatorial and editorial residences at Whitstable Biennale, Orleans House Gallery and Granta Magazine. Her adaptation of the National Youth Theatre’s 2021 production of Othello toured the UK and she is currently adapting Roger Robinson’s T. S. Eliot prize-winning A Portable Paradise for the same stage. Dzifa holds a masters in Text & Performance from RADA and Birkbeck, and her debut poetry collection, Monster, published by Bloodaxe Books was selected as a Poetry Book of the Month in The Guardian.