Poetry

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Course Date:   Sat 15th Nov 2025  - Full day, refreshments provided.

Workshop Title: Poems on the Ramp: What to Fiddle With and What to Leave Alone when Poems Break Down on the Side of the Road and No One Stops to Help

Workshop Level: All levels welcome. The only necessary qualification is the willingness to try new things.

Workshop Summary: Participants are invited to bring along a poem-in-progress (or a banger from the bottom drawer) or, equally, to come empty-handed (but with their sleeves rolled up!) The workshop will consist of practical (as well as a few highly impractical) exercises for getting underneath and around the back of a poem in order to get oil to those seized-up bearings. Note: Anyone who does not win at least one Nobel Prize after this workshop will get their money back (Ed: maybe cut that last bit).

Course Outcomes : Participants should come away from the workshop not necessarily with a finished poem but with a number of practices that can greatly help to make a poem memorable and engaging for people other than its author. 

Biography: 

Pat Boran is a poet, broadcaster and short film-maker who has published a dozen books of poetry as well memoir, fiction for children and various non-fiction forms. His writers’ handbook, The Portable Creative Writing Workshop, has been in print for two decades, and he has conducted writing workshops around Ireland and abroad for many years. He is a member of Aosdána, and is the current editor at Dedalus Press, producing numerous anthologies and over a hundred individual collections by some of Ireland’s best-known poets.

Eight participants (max) accepted on course. 

You can book your place by clicking on the link below.

Course fee €110 including refreshments.