Im running two workshops as part of the Parnassus. The first will be housed in the Poets Festival village, at 2pm on Friday June 29th, and open only to the Parnassus poets and the local poets chosen to be hosts, or 'buddies.'
Parnassian Renga: a workshop with SJ Fowler - 2pm on Friday June 29th in the Festival village: Following the tradition of the global adaptation and idiosyncratisation of the form of Renga, this workshop follows the chain games of the Surrealism, the translations of the Vou group, the chainpoets of New York and the Tomlinson / Roubaud / Paz project of the 1970s. A riff on what Charles Henri Ford defined as “intellectual sport … an anonymous shape laying in a hypothetical joint imagination.”
The second is open to all. It starts at 2pm on Saturday June 30th and runs for two hours, meeting outside the Poetry Library on level 5 of the southbank. The caveat is that the lines are all stolen from books housed in the poetry library, but, in fact, they can be from books participants bring, and I don't really care if they are poetry either, or if they are adapted or rewritten. All that matters is the essentially Oulipean / Situationist spirit at the heart of proceedings. http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/events/writingpoetry/?id=7768
Cento, or patchwork text or homage renga or thievery poetry: a workshop with SJ Fowler Saturday June 30th at 2pm in the Poetry Library foyet
The ancient art of Renga, but as an act of homage and theft, creating a Remix poem out of the singled, lost lines of other poets great works. A collaborative work of plagiarism, attendees will be given a set of rules with which to work and let loose.Using the poetry library as a resource, this workshop is a facilitated session where those in attendance work line to line with in concert with each other, creating series of poems in small groups while writing simultaneously to order their lines after writing, and then coming together to write one larger poem in narrative, responsive order. Friday 29th in the Festival village
