We will read essays by poets such as Louise Glück, Jane Hirshfield, Jean Valentine, Mary Oliver, Adam Kirsch, and others, who discuss how the unsaid is vital to the production of poetic meaning.

We will then read poems by some of the poets mentioned above as well as Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, William Shakespeare, Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, and Jessica Greenbaum paying attention to the significance of the gaps between words.

Finally, students will write their own poems always attuned to working with silences that create a forcefield of poetic meaning and power. Students will write from prompts and produce poems that balance the delicate dynamic between the words on the page and the unsaid, reflecting a poetics of reticence.

Eve Grubin is the author of a book of poems, Morning Prayer (Sheep Meadow Press), and a pamphlet, The House of Our First Loving (Rack Press). She is writing a PhD thesis on Emily Dickinson and the Poetics of Reticence. She teaches at NYU in London.

Dates: 5 fortnightly sessions on Thursdays, 7–9pm, from 14 October to 9 December 2021
Location: Online via Zoom
Cost: £118

Further details and to book here