Writing the City: Transreading Paris in the Springtime
Parisienne pleasures - Paris as poetic muse.
“There should be a name for the syndrome that occurs when you’re in Paris and you already miss it.” – Rosecrans Baldwin
“My art needs Paris as a tree needs water.” – Marc Chagall
City of Light. Romantic. Revolutionary. Muse. Paris is both a cliché and an enigma. This course is a full-on engagement with this multi-layered city. We’ll delve into key historical moments; explore architecture, cemeteries, cafés; stroll the boulevards; peek into bookshops and brothels; encounter writers and artists such as Hemingway, Chagall, Valadon, Utrillo, Stein, Baudelaire, Cartier-Bresson, Perec, and Elkin; and venture into lesser-known arrondissements. We might even risk a glass of absinthe!
As well as a wide range of poems and texts evoking this beguiling city, each assignment will include a film set in Paris: Funny Face – Hollywood’s vibrant musical take on the city starring a luminous Audrey Hepburn, Agnès Varda’s quirky Cléo de 5 à 7, as well as Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups, Godard’s A Bout de Souffle and Woody Allen’s romantic comedy Midnight in Paris.
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.
Concessions & Accessibility
To apply for a concessionary rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to [email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected]. For more information visit our Online Courses page.
Image credit: @shvetsa
About Sue Burge 
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Sue Burge is a freelance creative-writing and film-studies tutor, mentor, and editor based in North Norfolk, UK. Sue’s poems have been published in a wide range of journals and have also featured in themed anthologies on science fiction, modern Gothic, illness, Britishness, endangered birds, WWI, and the Covid pandemic. In 2016 she received an Arts Council grant that enabled her to write a body of poetry in response to the cinematic and literary legacy of Paris which resulted in her first pamphlet, Lumière (Hedgehog Poetry Press). She has three collections out with Live Canon, In the Kingdom of Shadows (2018), Confetti Dancers (2021), and The Artificial Parisienne (2024). The latter explores the world of the alter ego she left behind in Paris four decades ago and her ongoing on-off relationship with the city that has become her muse. Sue’s second pamphlet, The Saltwater Diaries (Hedgehog Poetry Press) was published in 2020. Her fourth collection, watch it slowly fade, is forthcoming with Yaffle Press. Sue is currently working on a book of lyric essays which further explore her relationship with Paris.
"I enjoyed working with different people and meeting new poets."
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