From poem to manuscript: spark your poetry practice in this extended program with Felicity Plunkett
A 4-month program presented as part of The Writer’s Process writers’ development program
This online masterclass is designed to expand and nurture your practice as a poet. We’ll create an encouraging and inspiring community, and support the creation and development of work, from single poems to sequences, and explore how to build a collection of poetry. Together, we’ll make room for poetry and explore the space of the poems we read and write.
Its structure includes five three-week modules, each starting with a week focused on prompts, resources, poems and micro-exercises organised around themes, followed by two weeks dedicated to workshopping the poems you develop or rework in the light of these ideas.
Each module will explore a theme and aspect of poetry, exploring it from a range of angles. Online materials and discussion will complement a two-hour weekly masterclass. The course is designed to introduce a unique range of materials informed by Felicity’s expertise as a writer, editor and educator, and will include sustenance for your creative practice, a vast array of forms and prompts, and spaciousness for each poet’s work to receive close and careful feedback.
Led by award-winning poet and critic Dr Felicity Plunkett, who was Poetry Editor with University of Queensland Press for a decade, our community of reading writers will explore a range of poems and ideas. We’ll build on the collection of set poems and resources through recommendations by Felicity and the other group members in response to participants’ interests and focus.
Each writer will be encouraged to draft new work in response to these readings and short set writing exercises or practices, and to use these ideas as a lens to explore poems already in draft. There will be prompts relating to developing and sustaining a creative practice. Workshopping weeks will allow close discussion of each poet’s work, and develop critical and editorial skills under Felicity’s guidance.
This course will be taught by Zoom over a 4-month period, in 16 two-hour blocks from 6pm - 8pm on Thursdays. There will be a two-week break between sessions 9 and 10.
There will be an online space for discussion and sharing of drafts and discussion. The course will commence on 9 May and conclude on 5 September.
The course will also feature a one-hour online Q&A session with poet Miriam Wei Wei Lo or Kim Cheng Boey.
There will be up to eight participants in this class.
"Felicity tailored an extraordinary mix of individual motivational advice and personal supportive workshopping in a very limited time span… I am inspired to make my work as good as it can be, to further my own growth as a poet and writer with the tools Felicity and the workshop group have furnished me with."
- Lucy Alexander, 2021 and 2023 participant. Lucy’s collection Equations of Breath has recently been published. Many of the poems started life in Varuna’s poetry courses.
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Week 1: Module 1: First, the line
Weeks 2 and 3: Module 1 workshops and discussion
Week 4: Module 2: The poem’s room
Week 5-6: Module 2 workshops
Week 7: Module 3: Breaks
Week 8-9: Module 3 workshops
Break
Week 10: Module 4: Repairs
Week 11-12: Module 4 workshops
Week 13: Module 5: Sequencing
Week 14-15: Module 5 workshops
Week 16: Celebration, discussion, Q&A
HOW TO APPLY
Entry to this course is by application. Writers will be selected based on the creative potential of their work, commitment to craft, openness to collaborating with peers and the balance in the group.
If we receive a significant number of applications we will curate two groups of 8 participants and offer a second program on Wednesdays from 4pm - 6pm. We will curate the groups with a focus on whether the poets are wanting to strengthen the foundations of their skills and their knowledge of poetic form and criticism, including foundational terminology, or whether there is assumed knowledge of terminology. Aside from this small difference the course content will be the same, curation of groups will just allow us to tailor the program content to suit all poets.
Course fees are $2295, or $2200 for Varuna alumni. Payment terms are negotiable if you cannot pay the whole fee upfront. Feel free to call 02 4782 5674 or email amy@varuna.com.au to discuss your application.
IMPORTANT DATES AND INFORMATION
Start date: Thursday 9 May
End date: Thursday 5 September
Course break (no sessions): Two weeks between sessions 9 and 10 (no classes on 11 and 18 July)
Zoom duration: 2 hour blocks from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (Sydney time) on Thursdays
Applications have closed for this program.
Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic. She is the author of A Kinder Sea (UQP), Vanishing Point (UQP) and the chapbook Seastrands (Vagabond) and editor of Thirty Australian Poets (UQP). She is a widely-published writer of reviews, essays and the occasional short story. She has a PhD from the University of Sydney, and was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award during her years teaching full-time in universities, including the Universities of Sydney, Queensland and New England. She was Poetry Editor with University of Queensland Press and has extensive experience as a mentor and creative editor. She was Chief Examiner of NSW’s HSC English Extension course for five years and also mentors students and teachers.
Miriam Wei Wei Lo writes because it is a joy to explore, imagine, and process with words. She was a 2023 Westerly Mid Career Fellow and is currently translating and writing poetic responses to her grandmother’s autograph album. She also teaches creative writing at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education. Her latest poetry collection is Who Comes Calling? Find her on Substack at Little Lightnings: miriamweiweilo.substack.com
Kim Cheng Boey
Since emigrating to Australia from Singapore in 1997, Kim Cheng Boey has made a home in Berowra, New South Wales. His poems have featured in the literature syllabus of the GCE A Level, the HSC and the International Baccalaureate. Besides poetry, he has published a travel memoir, Between Stations, and Gull Between Heaven and Earth, a historical novel about the Tang poet Du Fu. His most recent book of poetry The Singer and Other Poems won the Kenneth Slessor Prize in 2023.