Jaws at 50 (‘You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Class’)
Fear and fantasy – exploring the wonder of Spielberg’s Jaws
Simon Barraclough is a Jaws baby, seeing the film in the cinema on first release, instantly traumatised and enthralled by the immersive power of cinema. For a long time afterwards he avoided all bodies of water, including the school’s swimming pool. He still thinks and writes about it to this day:
The Seventies have left the building, the solar system,
Voyager’s barrels dragging the decade to the stars.
I don’t know what they’ll do with it. Might eat it, I suppose.
Those probes are portable showers, monkey cages.
Jaws around the block all summer, around the ABC, rogue film.
Our family waited months to see it. I’d heard so many rumours,
already knew some of the shocks and yet immersion was complete.
Cinemmersive, cinematter, cinemater, cinesanguine maw of sea-green awe,
never to recover, never to breach the surface again.
[From a work in progress]
In this one-day workshop to mark the half-century of one of the most influential films ever made, we will analyse scenes, discuss technique, tease out themes, look at Jaws poems, explore personal reactions, and write new work in response to this enduring leviathan of modern cinema.
What is a ‘Spielberg oner’ and can we reproduce it in verse? How do we approach the legendary USS Indianapolis speech in poetry? What do we make of the psychosexual politics of Jaws? What do we make of the class politics of Jaws? What do we make of the plain old-fashioned politics of Jaws in the era of Vietnam and Watergate?
What of the shark itself, of sharks themselves? How about that gigantic puppet with the doll’s eyes and why is it so terrifying, so uncanny? Is the shark-film genre out of control? Is not-showing better than showing and better than telling? Can we defend Mayor Vaughn? How about that incredible two-Act structure? Why is Jaws so white, so male? All this and more will be explored on (or as near as we can make it to) the Fourth of July! Come on in, the water’s lovely.
1 x full day session, running 10.30am–4.30pm (BST), on 5 July 2025. This course will take place at The Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton St, London WC2H 9BX.
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. More information about how our In-Person Courses work can be found on the In-Person 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: @thomascpark
About Simon Barraclough 
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Simon Barraclough has taught many classes at The Poetry School and is the author of several poetry collections and pamphlets, including his Forward-debut, Los Alamos Mon Amour, Bonjour Tetris, Neptune Blue, Sunspots, Iarnród Éireann, and his brand new book, Divine Hours (Broken Sleep Books, 2024). He devised the multi-poet, multimedia events Psycho Poetica and Vertiginous and toured Sunspots as a one-man show with songs and films in 2015/2016. In 2014 he was writer in residence at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory and is one of three editors behind the new humanity-in-space website Project Aboena. A cinema addict from a very early age, Simon often writes about film and loves to investigate the fruitful similarities and differences between poetry and cinema.
"I wrote some poems that surprised me in their quality about things I always hope to write better about."
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