Fabric-

ation

Slip back to source: a journey of natural materials

Kay Syrad & Clare Whistler

Ecopoetry is a poetry that aspires to be conscious of what we are doing when we describe, record, interact with or take from what we call ‘nature’. This 6 week course will attempt to re-wild wearing – imagining, through embodied and connective writing, the return of fabrics from human use to their non-human source. Although there will be plenty of writing exercises, this course is not quite a ‘creative writing’ course and won’t be a place for a lot of individual feedback. As in our previous ecopoetics courses, we will focus, rather, on creating dynamic new work in a shared context, drawing on an international range of historical and contemporary eco-poetry and prose.

Tuesdays 6.30 – 8.30pm / 24 September – 29 October

All welcome.

Upstairs at ONCA

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kay Syrad

Kay is a poet, novelist and Poetry Editor of Envoi. Her publications include an anthology of eco-poetry, Poemish and Other Languages (edited with Clare Whistler, Elephant Press, 2019), a novel Send (Cinnamon, 2015), a collaboration with land artist Chris Drury, Exchange (Little Toller/Cape Farewell, 2015) and a second full collection of poetry, Inland (Cinnamon, 2018). Her art-text Work of the lightship men: 1000 tasks (2013), was bought by the National Maritime Museum for their permanent collection. Kay is an experienced tutor, and co-founder of the Vert Institute for art events and writing. With Clare Whistler she has recently led eco-poetics workshops at ONCA and at Knepp Wildland.

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Clare Whistler

Artist Poet Choreographer Collaborator. Clare makes work in performance, site-specific work in the landscape, poetry, music and visual art. Her international career as a dancer, choreographer and director has included fifteen years working in opera and education and community projects. She has been Artist in Residence at many locations, including The Library of Water, Iceland, Banff in Canada, and at the Centre of the History of Emotions, Queen Mary University, London (Leverhulme), where she produced her Tear Treasury. She also teaches on local creative writing courses, and on the liberal arts programme at Stanford University. Recent publications include Poemish & Other Languages (2019, co-editor with Kay Syrad), Gifts (2017, both Elephant Press), with poems in Envoi, Poems for a Liminal Age, (ed. M. Pannett) and prose in Dark Mountain, ‘Techne’ Edition

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