How do you write a minimalist poem? Do you start out minimalist and avoid waffle? Or do you start out waffling and reduce it to something stark like an Emily Dickinson poem? Or almost whited-out like one by Susan Howe? This course is about the art of a very short poem taking up a whole page by itself. Such poems sometimes feel a waste of a page, but they can be a new way in, an amuse-yeux after a forest of larger poems. We will look at the poem as a minimalist object, condensed down to the size of a maths equation, or a quip. And we’ll also look at performing the minimalist fragment, comparing minimalist poetry with minimalist music, where ‘phrases’ are played repetitiously for an extended time. If you’ve ever wondered instead of piling up detail how we can let one verb do the work for two sentences worth, without it all seeming unnaturally tight, start here.

Live chats: Mondays, fortnightly, 7pm UK time.
First live chat: 28 Sep. 5 sessions.