Across the weekend, you’ll dive into a rich range of poems and prompts exploring form, craft and practice, drawing on Felicity’s deep well of experience as a poet, critic, editor and educator. Expect to leave inspired, challenged, and equipped with new tools to sustain your poetry long after the workshop ends.
Each session includes short presentations and exercises, lively discussion of poems that will spark new thinking, and generous space to draft, share and workshop your own work.
Felicity will guide you through:
• Starting and developing strong drafts
• Giving and receiving feedback that’s tailored, attentive and genuinely useful
• Building habits that sustain a creative practice for the long haul
Every participant gets the chance to workshop a poem of up to one page, which can be shared in advance of the weekend. You’ll also have dedicated blocks to write in response to fresh prompts and share that new work with the group, receiving thoughtful feedback from both Felicity and your fellow poets over the weekend.
Whether you’ve done a Varuna poetry masterclass before or are joining us for the first time, this course assumes participants will have some experience reading and writing poetry.
Come away with new poems, new connections, and a treasury of prompts, practices and encouragement to carry your creative practice forward.
ABOUT FELICITY PLUNKETT
Dr Felicity Plunkett is a poet and critic and educator with decades of experience. She is Poetry Editor with Australian Book Review. Her books are A Kinder Sea (UQP), Vanishing Point (UQP) and the chapbook Seastrands (Vagabond) and editor of Thirty Australian Poets (UQP). She is also a widely-published writer of reviews, essays and the occasional short story. She has a PhD from the University of Sydney, and was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award during her years teaching full-time in universities, including the Universities of Sydney, Queensland and New England. She was Poetry Editor with University of Queensland Press for a decade and continues to edit other poets’ work for several publishers. She has extensive experience as a mentor and creative editor. Felicity was Chief Examiner of NSW’s HSC English Extension course for five years and works as a mentor with students and teachers. This year, she was awarded the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize.
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