The Dream of Poetry
Explore how the Unconscious can inform our writing, as we break from narrative logic and delve into dreams.
‘Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will.’ – Carl Jung, CW 10:317.
Mesopotamian civilization was the first to develop writing, dating back to the late 3rd millennium B.C. The very first records of writing are accounts of dreams. Myths feel like collective dreams, full of impossible happenings about the way things never were but always are. Our poems are portals of dream logic. The poet and the dreamer are alike in their faculty of vision – the relation being indicated by the use of language, which often reveals psychological truth that is otherwise kept hidden. Is poetry our way of dreaming while waking, in order to make sense of our lives? A necessary act to survive.
Plot three points, a mapping of the liminal. Over and over, a triumvirate appears. A constellation for the seekers: Poetry, Dream, Magic. Dream logic is not rational. Poems, like dreams, are not bound by the rules of prosaic narrative. How is it that something that doesn’t ‘make sense’ can still move us?
In this course, we will explore our connections as dreamer-poet-magicians, looking at how dreams and the Unconscious inform our poetry, just as they have informed poets we all know and love. We will make use of various experiments and tools, such as Jung’s dream analysis method to generate portals to dream logic, producing innovating new poems along the way.
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.
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: Elias Maurer
About Sascha Akhtar 
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Sascha Akhtar is a CW lecturer at the University of Greenwich. She performs internationally, some highlights include the Emirates Festival of Literature 2022 and Rotterdam Poetry Festival 2012. Latest writings appear in the Prototype Annual 4, Cut-Purse (Tangerine Press), Of Myths and Mothers anthology 2022, and Lucy Writers Platform. Akhtar has poetry forthcoming with both Intergraphia and Haverthorn Press and a book of translations from Urdu with Oxford University Press (2023).These follow on from six poetry collections, including The Grimoire of Grimalkin, (SALT, 2007), The Whimsy of Dank Ju-Ju (Emma Press 2019), and the innovative tarot deck of poetry Only Dying Sparkles (Zimzalla 2018). Akhtar has been facilitating teachings in magical practice and poetry at the Poetry School exclusively since 2018.
‘Poetry School classes have been really important to me stimulating me to write more and improving the quality of my writing.’
Geography for the Lost
Time’s Fool: Time as Subject & Technique
‘A giant collaboration with the world’: The Poetic Journal