Workshop: The Art of Invisible Mending with Felicity Plunkett

Saturday 4 June

9.30 am - 11.30 am

Judith Wright Centre

This workshop is sold out.

Facilitator: Felicity Plunkett

Kim Addonizio has described the poem ready for edit as the patient, lying on a steel table.

‘Let’s suppose your poem is on the table. How do you keep from killing it?’

There’s a magic to first drafts. Their serendipity, energy and wildness can be wonderful. It can feel risky to redraft. Craft and editing sound like they may endanger wild drafting, but they can do the opposite, finding the deeper ways the poem might expand (or contract). Craft and expertise nurture and propel intuition.

This workshop is designed for poets interested in working an editorial capacity – including in relation to your own work. The workshop draws on my decade as Poetry Editor at UQP, and my experience as a mentor and supervisor of postgraduate students over fifteen years.

Exploring various editors’ and mentors’ techniques, with an accent on finding the unique and delicate balance between sharing generously your knowledge and experience as a poet to extend another poet in their own unique practice. There will be a focus on the art of giving feedback in ways that are clear, encouraging and inspiring, while always responsive to the particular poet’s needs and poetics.

This workshop is for all poets, but will especially suit those working with others’ poems (or wanting to develop strategies to edit their own). We’ll look at a range of tools and approaches to fearless redrafting and apply these to your drafts. We’ll be building ways to start killing it (in the best sense) as a poetry editor.

Ticket types: $50 (waged), $40 (unwaged), $60 (generous supporter)