Unravelling Mothers
Rediscover this poignant theme through poetry that resists stereotypes and reimagines the experience of motherhood.
How do we evoke or reimagine our mothers? What are the untold stories or new ways of capturing the lives and work of a mother, and their matrix of relationships? Can mothering be a metaphor? Creatively, do we give ourselves permission to articulate our difficult emotions towards our mothers or being mothers?
For those who are mothers or long to be: what are the triumphs, the becoming of love, the taboos and traumatic memories surrounding lived, witnessed or reimagined experience of motherhood? In an age of fluid gender identities, how do we resist stereotypes of mothers and the intersections between gender and parenthood?
Looking at the different ways mothers and motherhood are portrayed in the works by poets such as Sharon Olds, Rebecca Goss, Ocean Vuong, Liz Berry, Warsan Shire, Marie Howe, Julia Webb, Joanna Ingham, and others, participants will be encouraged to experiment with new forms and voices, rediscovering this poignant theme through their own work.
5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students. This course will also feature a live Zoom session, which the tutor will arrange directly with the students to ensure a convenient date & time for everyone.
To apply for a concessionary rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to administ[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: smit-patel
About Jennifer Wong 
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Jennifer Wong was born and grew up in Hong Kong. She studied English at Oxford and received a creative writing PhD from Oxford Brookes University. Her poems have appeared in The Rialto, Magma Poetry, Oxford Poetry, World Literature Today, Stand, The North, Wildness, The Scores, Asian Cha, Voice & Verse, Prairie Schooner, and others. She has also published translations in Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Pathlight. Her first UK collection, 回家 Letters Home, was published by Nine Arches Press in 2020 and was named a Wild Card choice by Poetry Book Society. She was writer in residence with Wasafiri in 2021 and a visiting fellow at Oxford TORCH in 2022. She has taught creative writing workshops and courses in higher education and community settings. Her monograph, Home, Identity and Writing Elsewhere was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2023. She is co-editor of the Where Else Hong Kong Poetry Anthology (Verve, 2023).
‘Jennifer Wong was an excellent tutor. Her assignments were clear an thoughtful with plenty of background material and suggestions for continuing work. Her comments on participants' poems showed sensitivity by being tailored to the person concerned and I much appreciated the attention to detail on mine.’
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