The Elegy is traditionally a poem of lamentation; however, this powerful form can also be used to write back into life those we miss and mourn.

When Douglas Dunn wrote ' writing with light the heart within my eye/shines on my grief, my true contemporary' - he wasn't just mourning the loss of his wife, but demonstrating how elegy can shine a light on those we have lost.

In this inspiring and informative class, you will explore elegies - old and new - and write your own vivid, time-traveling poems which may illuminate the lives of parents, brothers and sisters, or friends or even species that have become extinct.

You will look at poets, including Tennyson, Douglas Dunn and Julia Webb - for inspiration.

Anna Saunders is the author of eight books: Communion, Kissing the She Bear (Wild Conversations Press),  Struck (Pindrop Press), Burne Jones and the Fox, Ghosting for Beginners, Feverfew, The Prohibition of Touch, and Eurydice in the Ruined House (all Indigo Dreams). Fran Lock said of Eurydice in the Ruined House ‘this is a deft and generous work in which to delight’, and Samatar Elmi described it as ‘ a triumph of vision, craft, and execution’. Anna has been widely published in journals and holds four Arts Council Awards. She is the Founding Director of Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Anna has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything’, (The North), ‘a poet of quite remarkable gifts,’ ( Bernard O’Donoghue), and ‘a modern myth maker’ - Paul Stephenson. The American poet Joseph Fasano said of her ‘Anna Saunders poems reach back to the very origins of who we are, and, in their contact with the ancient things, they transform themselves into freshness, newness, life. Dripping with myth, they sing, they mourn, they celebrate. There is magic in these poems—not the superficial magic of illusion but the deep magic of being.