Taking place in a central Toronto location, to be announced shortly.

An advanced workshop about ditching likability in favour of the unabashed.

Lyric poetry is due to evolve. While we continue to draw from our own experiences and from the goings on in our minds, the approach to writing from such a vantage point needs to shift. Too much of the lyric is about creating a likable speaker, and this likability is gained at the forfeit of less-sympathetic, more relatable, heavy-hitting truths.

We will focus on what it means to be honest about those aspects of ourselves and the world around us that get overlooked too often on account of their unsympathetic nature.

Key topics covered will be universality, fear, the tyranny of the politically correct, perfection/ the appeal of the trembling imperfect, uninhibited exploration of the self and other, and writing nakedly with the risk of being all to clearly understood.

Poets discussed include Louis Gluck, Frederick Seidel, Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin, Jack Gilbert, John Berryman, and many others.

This would be an advanced workshop with a bound collections of all relevant poems for each participant to mark up as he or she pleases. 2 hours discussion, 2 hours workshopping.

Please bring 10 copies of one or two of your own confessional poems for workshopping.

Registration will be closed once 10 people have paid in full. If the workshop is a success it will be repeated monthly.

About the facilitator:

Robin Richardson is the author of Knife Throwing Through Self-Hypnosis ECW Press, 2013 and Grunt of the Minotaur Insomniac Press, 2011. Her work has been shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Award, Lemon Hound Poetry Prize, and ReLit Award and has won the John B. Santoianni Award the Joan T. Baldwin Award. Her work has appeared in many journals including Tin House and Arc. She holds an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence, and divides her time between Toronto and New York.

To learn more about Robin visit:

https://knifehypnosis.squarespace.com/home-1

To register contact:

knifehypnosis@gmail.com.

Payment guarantees you a spot. Cost $120 - includes snacks and bound copy of relevant poems.