Old English for Poets
Since the publication of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, there has been an explosion of interest in Old (as well as Middle) English poetry by contemporary poets. Yet the practice of raiding the Old English wordhoard for ideas and inspiration is actually much older; poets (from Tennyson to Edwin Morgan) had done so for over a hundred years before Heaney. In this, the final in a series of three workshops led by Chris Jones over the past few festivals, we’re looking at how early English poets used variation and alliteration as the core building blocks of their verse. We’ll also look at analogous examples in a range of modern poets, and use this as a starting point to work on our own poems.
This workshop will take place on Zoom.
Supported by the School of English at the University of St Andrews
