Open Workshop: ‘Dream Mechanics’

Do you write poetry in your sleep? Are you prone to visions of the night? Do you believe dreams reveals aspects of yourself? You’re not alone – poets from Chaucer to Kleinzahler have long delighted in the fantastical and uncertain landscapes created by our unconscious minds.

In this workshop, poet and publisher Tom Chivers will be putting a wrench to our liminal states, guiding you under the hood of the ‘dream-poem’ and shining a torch to find out how they really work.You will explore the dream-poem’s various techniques of surprise, concealment and de-familiarisation, drawing on examples from the very new to the very (fourteenth century) old, and writing your own visionary efforts. The workshop will culminate in an online live chat lasting 1am-3am in the morning.

This Open Workshop is part of our CAMPUS Digital Open Day.

Title: Dream Mechanics

Starts: 28 April 2014

Live chat: 7 May 2014, 1am GMT

To book your place, please email [email protected]

Tom Chivers was born in South London in 1983. His publications include How to Build a City (Salt, 2009), The Terrors (Nine Arches, 2009 – shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award), Flood Drain (Annexe, 2014) and, as editor, the anthologies Adventures in Form and Mount London (Penned in the Margins, 2012 & 2014). He has made site-specific, perambulatory and audio work for Southbank Centre, Bishopsgate Institute, The Eden Project, Humber Mouth Literary Festival and LIFT. In 2009 he presented a documentary on the poet Barry MacSweeney for BBC Radio 4, and in 2011 his poem ‘The Event’ was turned into an animated film for Channel 4. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2011. An independent publisher and arts producer by trade, Tom is former co-Director of London Word Festival and currently runs Penned in the Margins from a small office in Aldgate.