New Myths and Legends: Building a World through Poetry
Worldbuilding is the lifeblood of narrative, and as poets and storytellers we spend the best part of our time thinking about the places, history, culture and mores of our own fictional worlds. On this course, you will create your own poetic ‘storyworld’ and use poetry to gradually reveal its details – money, clothing, territorial boundaries, tribal customs, building materials, what people eat, what it smells like after it rains, etc. We will look at classic examples from the genres of fantasy and science fiction as a starting point, such as Westeros, Middle-earth, Earthsea, Zembla, Narnia – each of which has its own poetic culture that serves to bring the main narrative to life – and write poems and text, draw maps, and imagine the lost works of our imaginary canons, inspired by our imaginary places. We will also look at the influence of folk songs and traditional poetry on writers such as Borges and Tolkien, while examining other mythopoeia created by Blake, Eliot and less well known poets, to create a body of work that questions the notion of authorship and makes new connections in your poetry.
This is a private group. To join you must be a registered site member and request group membership.