Creative Writing Courses 2012

The Irish Writers' Centre has just announced their new collection of Creative Writing Courses for this term. Whether you're a total novice or a burgeoning star who needs that extra nudge, they claim to have a course for you.

The weekly courses start soon and last 6 to 10 weeks. These include:
Finish Your Novel with Conor Kostick
Tales of the City: Short Fiction Workshop with Seán O'Reilly
Crime Writing with Arlene Hunt
Intermediate Creative Writing with Nessa O'Mahony
Journalism and New Media with Henry McDonald
Beginners' Creative Writing with Emer Martin
How To Write A Novel with Juliet Bressan
Poetry Workshop with Paul Perry

The Weekend Courses are one or two-day events:

Writing Popular Fiction with Sarah Webb
Writing Conceptual Poetry with Ira Lightman
Screenwriting for Beginners with Ferdia Mac Anna
Beginners' Creative Writing with John Maher
Short-Form Memoir with Molly McCloskey

The Poetry Workshop with Paul Perry entitled Beyond the Workshop sounds interesting.

In this eight-week ‘poetry lab’ we will discuss the elements of surprise and experiment in poetry and focus on the creation of new work and the revision of work-in-progress through the use of writing exercises and responses to readings. We will also look at issues relating to what comes beyond the poetry workshop and immerse ourselves in what Paul has developed as ‘the writing lab’. In this course, we will also start an on-line poetry blog, make our own poetry pamphlets and hold a reading.

As does the one-day Writing Conceptual Poetry with Ira Lightman (pictured above) on Saturday 19 May.

The workshop will feature exercises in collecting text and, if not "randomizing" one's own work, then making procedural selections that crack it open. Ira will run activities in double-column and multi-vocal poetry; devising and executing a concept to make a poem; using free software to make video and sound realizations of one's work and then tamper with it; and an exercise in writing a proposal to do a conceptual poem as an arts project, how to describe the work, sell it, budget for it, and show how it meets funding criteria.

Check the website for full details.