A Magnificent Error: Poetry after Magritte
Rewrite reality inspired by Magritte’s use of visual metaphor and metonym.
* This course will take place on the video-conferencing platform ZOOM *
Rewrite reality inspired by Magritte’s use of visual metaphor and metonym.
Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte famously once woke in a room where a caged bird was kept. Instead of the bird, ‘a magnificent error’ caused him to see an egg inside the cage, leading him to grasp ‘an astonishing poetic secret’ – the ‘hidden affinity’ or poetry produced in the meeting of two unrelated objects: ‘cage’ and ‘egg’. In this workshop exploring the nature of representation, we will examine Magritte’s claim: ‘The function of painting is to make poetry visible,’ investigating the view that poetry is not solely a literary entity, but also an aesthetic phenomenon. While renowned for his paintings, Magritte was also a playful writer. This workshop engages with translations of his lesser-known literary works alongside key examples of visual metaphor in his paintings.
We will take part in writing exercises inspired by Magritte’s fascination with object relationships, disrupting ‘normal’ spatial and temporal contiguity to create poems driven by a destabilising associative logic. In the process, we will approach questions such as, how can we produce exciting, unexpected metonyms without them seeming gratuitous, can poetry exist without language, and how real is a representation of reality?
We will consider how poets Heather Phillipson, Ed Steck, and Mark Waldron animate Magritte’s ideas, revealing the distance between language, representation, and ‘the thing itself’. Join us as we attempt to pull off Magritte’s most captivating magic trick, asking how we might evoke a world in which the figurative appears literal.
1-off Zoom session at 10.30am – 1pm (BST on Saturday 5th September)
Concessions & Accessibility
To apply for a concession rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to [email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here.
What to Expect
This course is part of The September Sessions: 10 Years of the MA in Writing in Poetry, a series of Zoom workshops celebrating 10 Years of our MA in Writing in Poetry programme. Check out the full line up here.
More information about how our Video Courses work can be found on the Video Courses page. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected].
Image Credit: Wiki Art
About Rachael Brown 
View Profile
Rachael Brown holds an MA in Writing Poetry from Poetry School and now works as a writer and English Literature tutor in Oxfordshire. She was a BBC New Creative 2020 – 2021 and was longlisted in Culture Recording’s New Voice in Poetry Prize 2020. Her work has since been published in The North and The Passionfruit Review, and reflects her interest in hybrid writing informed by radio drama, silent film, and surreal visual art. In 2024, her work was commissioned by a member of the Paraorchestra to accompany a series of 3D-animated short films.
"Poetry School is giving me the freedom to express myself in the the expanse of poetry. It has giving me the sanctuary to feel connected, to be healed. It has opened my window for the garden of imagination."
A Cloud in Trousers: Emotional Intensification Through Distance 
Carmen et Error 
New York Poets for a New Century: When Nothing is Too Much Detail