By lyric poems, we mean short poems with song-like qualities that express the speaker’s personal emotions and thoughts.  

In this workshop, you will use your own experiences to trigger lyric poems - and will look at examples of this powerful form, which include sonnets, odes, and elegies. We will look to writers, including Rainer Maria Rilke and  Louise Glück and Ocean Vuong for inspiration.

Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes—do you recall?
Falling Stars by Rainer Maria Rilke.

About the tutor –
Anna Saunders is the author of Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press) Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox, Ghosting for Beginners, Fever Few, The Prohibition of Touch and Eurydice in the Ruined House - all Indigo Dreams.

Anna is also the CEO and founder of Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything’ by The North, a ‘modern myth maker’ by Paul Stephenson, and ‘a poet of quite remarkable gifts’ by Bernard O’Donoghue.