This October, we've got a really exciting Writing Masterclass on offer run by poet, writer and tutor Ben Parker.
Tutor Ben Parker tells us about his new workshop.
You might recognise him from our previous Poetry for the Petrified course or one of our Live & Lyrical evenings, and this is your opportunity to enjoy an afternoon of exploring different prose works and also pick up some writing tips to create your own pieces! Below he tells us a bit about what the afternoon will involve and some of the other work he has going on at the moment.
Hi Ben! Can you tell us a bit about what you’ll be covering in your Writing Masterclass?
Although my primary interest, both as a reader and a writer, is poetry, in this class I will also be looking at some prose works. The main reason for this is that it would be incredibly negligent to approach the topic of imagining and inventing cities without considering Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. I am also a fan of William Burroughs, so will be looking at his city 'Interzone' which features in Naked Lunch and other of his books. The poets we will look at include Charles Tomlinson and John Ash, both writers that I think are not read as much as they should be, and so hopefully this class will introduce them to some new readers.
What can people expect to get out of the Masterclass?
I would hope that the two main things that participants will get out of this Masterclass are new writers and new writing. It would be great if people come away from the class having encountered poets they have not previously read, or poems they have not previously come across. They will hopefully also come away with new ways to think about writing, and with the confidence to experiment with styles/approaches they might not have considered before.
You’re theming the workshop around writer’s cities; is there something about this subject that particularly inspires you?
I guess the freedom of it is exciting to me, and also the audacity perhaps. To not just invent a character, or a situation, but a whole city. This is something I have enjoyed as a reader for years, but I have recently been playing around with it myself in a poetry sequence called 'Insomnia Postcards', some of which are available online.
What other projects do you have going on at the moment?
At the moment I am about halfway through my residency at the Museum of Royal Worcester, on the site of the old Worcester Porcelain works. The project involves me writing poems about various aspects of the porcelain factory, including individual artifacts, workers' stories, and the site's history, as well as teaching workshops there. Hopefully the culmination of the project will be the publication of a short book containing the poems I have written.
You can find out more about Ben and his previous work in one of our other interviews here, and can book for this workshop by calling our Box Office on 08455 218 218 or booking online here. We hope to see you there!