“Discovering Strangeness” is an exploration of wild poetry, the unfamiliar and the enticing, the odd and the erratic, the dark, the tangled, the gnarled, and the knotted. We can get lost there, or find a way out. We will use strategies of mapping to think about what we’re writing, and invent forms that suit the dynamics of new work. Through de-familiarizing ourselves with a way of writing we’ve grown comfortable with, splicing other writing into it, and cutting and shaping our work in ways we might not have considered, we can find what we didn’t know we wanted to say.

This course will take place as four two-hour sessions on Saturdays October 13, 20, 27, and November 10 (no course November 3). 

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

(author photo: Kate Waters)

Anne Simpson writes poetry, fiction, and essays. She has published seven books, four of which were Globe and Mail Best 100 Books. Her second book of poetry, Loop (McClelland & Stewart, 2003) won the Griffin Poetry Prize; her fifth collection, Strange Attractor, will be published in 2019. Her third novel, Speechless, will be published the following year. She has been a writer-in-residence in libraries and universities across Canada, most recently at Green College at the University of British Columbia.