WORKSHOP: Liberating Poetic Chaos: Emily Dickinson

Contact: huddlitfest@gmail.com

Emily Dickinson's poetry emerges from a chaotic inner life in which biographical elements (a repressed middle class upbringing, sexual frustration, mental and physical illness) are transformed by a visionary imagination informed by her religious training, experience of the American civil war, a love of nature, the observational eye of a scientist - and the existential terror and exhilaration she felt when she contemplated the fierce and fathomless powers of the inscrutable Universe she found herself thrown into.

Participants will identify the elements of Dickinson's chaos and complete writing exercises in her style and spirit.

Steve Ely is a poet from the West Riding of Yorkshire. His book of poems, Oswald's Book of Hours, was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2013 and the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry in 2014, and his second collection, Englaland, was published in April, 2015. He is also the author of a novel, Ratmen, and Ted Hughes's South Yorkshire: Made In Mexborough, a biographical work about Hughes's neglected Mexborough period.

A Huddersfield Literature Festival event (4-19 March)

Price: £10.00. (£10 (£5 conc))

Time: 2pm