Morning workshop with Ahren Warner, 11am-1pm: LYRIC MATERIALS: this workshop will explore how visual artists from Andre to Nauman and Atkins have appropriated language as material and how the specific devices of poetic language might have changed, or evolved, in the context of contemporary art practice. Starting from here, we will look at revising our own and each other’s writing to further explore the expanded terrain, unexpected twists and blind alleys that art writing might open up for the contemporary lyric text.

Afternoon workshop with Wayne Holloway-Smith, 2.30-4.30pm: THE POETIC IMAGE: this workshop will explore the arbitrary poetic links between an object/image and a newly-created meaning or value. By decontextualising a range of still-life images and personal photographs, participants will demythologise and bring new meanings to visual symbols as the basis for writing ekphrastic poetry.

Ahren Warner is the author of three books: Confer (Bloodaxe, 2011), Pretty (Bloodaxe, 2013) and Hello. Your promise has been extracted (Bloodaxe, 2017). Awards include an Arts Foundation Fellowship and three Poetry Book Society Recommendations. His writing, photographs and films have also been performed, installed or screened at various venues, including the Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico City), EU National Institute of Cultures (Athens), Royal Festival Hall (London) and Great North Museum (Newcastle). He is currently Poetry Editor of Poetry London and Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow at Loughborough University.