FRENCH POETRY CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP

Registration required / Open to any student from any college studying French at either undergraduate or postgraduate level

french poetry workshop ht23 flyer page 001

Dr Christophe Barnabé will be hosting a French Poetry Creative Writing Workshop (Atelier d’écriture poétique) this term at the Maison Française. The workshop is open to any student from any college studying French at either undergraduate or postgraduate level and has capacity for up to 10 participants.

 

Whether you’ve written poetry before or have only just begun thinking about it, this is an opportunity not only to practice and enhance your written French – by pushing its boundaries beyond the realms of prose – but also to gain a better understanding of what is at stake in the making of a poem in French today.

 

Each session will first cover a certain topic (dealing with form, subject, style, technique, etc.), and will include close readings of modern and contemporary French poets. This will get you acquainted with a body of literature you may be less familiar with, and help you appreciate how each author (and later yourself!) departs from or perpetuates tradition. In the second part of the workshop, you will read the poems you have written for that week and discuss them with the rest of the group.

 

The workshop is scheduled to start on week 2 this term and will take place fortnightly (even weeks) on Fridays between 16.00 and 18.00. If invited to take part in this workshop, you will be expected to attend all sessions.

 

If you are interested, please email Christophe Barnabé christophe.barnabe@new.ox.ac.uk introducing yourself, explaining briefly the reasons why you want to join and including, if possible, a poem you may have written in English (or French!). Don’t hesitate to also get in touch if you simply want to hear more or have any questions.


 

Christophe Barnabé is Lecturer in French at New College and Merton. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and has written on and translated a number of contemporary poets. His own poems have been featured in different literary magazines in France, Switzerland, and Belgium.