Listen Closely: Hearing and Speaking Poetry with Jonathan Davidson

Inspire Poetry Festival 2021

Listen Closely: Hearing and Speaking Poetry with Jonathan Davidson 

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Online Workshop
Tuesday 21 September, 6.30pm – 8pm
Tickets: £7
Booking essential, places strictly limited

Most of us hear poems before we read them; as children or perhaps at events. And many of us secretly enjoy speaking poems out loud; our own poems or ones we love by other people. This workshop will give participants a chance to find out what makes a poem good to hear and how to get the most out of time spent listening. As well as listening to great poems from across the ages, we’ll also be road-testing them with our own voices (although this bit is optional!) and finding out what we get from poetry when we say the words ourselves. The workshop will be informal and fun and a great way to enjoy poetry as a listener and speaker.

As well as being a widely published poet, Jonathan Davidson has spent many years finding ways of ‘releasing’ poetry through performance and audio. He has adapted poetry for performance on BBC Radio and created a ground-breaking series of poetry-theatre pieces using poems from anthologies published by Bloodaxe Books. His latest book, A Commonplace – Apples, Bricks & Other People’s Poems is a combination of his own poems alongside poems by others and with a commentary introducing the poems to readers.