Bumptious & Unruly: Queering Ecopoetics Masterclass
Join the weird, multi-species crew of our compost-bin spaceship, Earth.
In this course, we’ll look through a queer lens at the bumptious and unruly biosphere, seeing how it intersects with speculative, ecogothic, and queer-theory approaches. We’ll look at writing our troublesome (and troubled) relationship with the more-than-human world. Sure, we all wept at Sphen The Penguin’s lost love – but there’s more to doing queer ecopoetics than simply spotting the abundant queerness of the nonhuman world – ‘queering’ is a verb, rather than just subject or theme.
We’ll explore domesticity and homemaking as a queering of ideas of “Nature”, making oddkin from critters with whom we cohabit, through interspecies collaboration. We’ll find new alliances and coalitions with our least favourite ‘pests’. We’ll locate ‘unpoetic’ cultural texts – ads, TV, movies – and explore their approaches to representing the more-than-human, all as inspiration for our own new work.
Resisting the urge to catastrophise or dwell in foreclosed futures, we will reimagine our present through speculative approaches and ask: how might we conjure new worlds and ways of being, looking afresh at our surroundings and inhabitants? Invoking ‘otherworldliness’, we’ll explore links between the eco-queer and -gothic, as we gaze into pools and ponds to see what looks back and ask: if we view intelligence as scattered amongst the landscape, how might our own ecological consciousness evolve?
Throwing our voices to become nonhuman other is, of course, impossible. But the effort counts. Through a ‘creature-glitter’ approach, we’ll consider an ‘animal drag’ aesthetic to persona poems, acknowledging that nobody can truly speak for nonhuman life; but we can certainly have a lot of fun and maintain our poetic integrity through a self-aware approach to writing the creaturely.
There will be some theory along the way, but it won’t be scary, and it could, per Bell Hooks, become a ‘healing place’. We’ll work with Nicole Seymour’s ideas on ‘queer environmental affect’ to find non-traditional, non-(hetero)normative ways of articulating the climate and biodiversity crises. With a brief intro to ‘toxic theory’, we’ll write poems that celebrate the liveliness of matter and its icky, tricky interactions with human and nonhuman bodies. We’ll also see what happens when we queer our love to reach beyond living matter – to landfills, toxic dumps, and microplastics.
While this course will primarily be for LGBTQ+ poets, allies are very welcome. If you don’t identify as queer, this will be a unique opportunity to ask how can your poems become so? If you are queer – write about whatever you like and let their queerness shimmer through.
Masterclasses are an expanded version of our International Courses, with a much deeper consideration of technical craft and critical theory. These 12-week courses (maximum 10 places) are for advanced students only, and fluency with poetic language and ideas will be assumed. There are no live chats and they are suitable for UK and 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: @didsss
About Caleb Parkin 
View Profile
Caleb Parkin, Bristol City Poet 2020–22, has poems in The Guardian, The Rialto, The Poetry Review, and was guest poet on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please. His debut collection This Fruiting Body (Nine Arches, 2021) was longlisted for the Laurel Prize.
He’s published three pamphlets: Wasted Rainbow (tall-lighthouse, 2021); The Coin (Broken Sleep, 2022); and collected City Poet commissions, All the Cancelled Parties (2022). His second collection, Mingle, is published October 2024 (Nine Arches).
Caleb has featured at literary festivals including Poetry in Aldeburgh, Lyra Fest, and Push the Boat Out. He tutors for Arvon, Poetry Society, and Poetry School and holds an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes from Metanoia Institute.
He is currently a practice-based PhD researcher at University of Exeter with RENEW Biodiversity, exploring human/nonhuman communication and animal voices in poetry, through the lens of queer ecologies and ‘biodiversity’s ghosts’.
"It has helped me to become more positive about writing generally and my poetry in particular."
Play, Happenstance, & Improv: Women in Abstract Art Masterclass
‘cicadas exist; chicory, chromium, citrus trees’: an Environmental Transreading Masterclass
My People: Poetics of Social Change Masterclass