The Sound is the Gold: A poetry workshop

with David Mason and Cally Conan-Davies

The best poems often communicate before they are understood. They have an unparaphrasable magic, a quality of enchantment and surprise that sets them apart from ordinary speech. This may have to do with such things as metre and rhyme, with dramatic voice, or simply with uncanny couplings of words. Our workshop takes its lead from this nugget by Robert Frost: “The sound is the gold in the ore.” Guided by the example of some exceptional poems, we will work through several exercises focussed on letting sound deepen us into veins of thought we may never have reached on our own.

The former poet laureate of Colorado, David Mason grew up in Washington State and now lives in Tasmania, the island state of Australia. His many books include Ludlow, an award-winning verse novel, The Sound: New and Selected Poems, Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade, and Pacific Light. An essayist and librettist as well as a poet, Mason taught for many years at Colorado College and has given lectures and readings all over the world. His website can be found at https://davidmasonpoet.com/index.html

Cally Conan-Davies was born in Hobart 64 years ago, and recited her first poem on the Theatre Royal stage a few years after that. Since then, she has committed many poems to memory while studying at school and university, raising her daughter, and teaching poetry and writing across the country, and at colleges and other institutions in America. Since she began writing poetry a decade ago, Cally has been published widely in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in Australia. Some of her work has been translated into Chinese, and has been anthologised several times. She has given poetry readings and workshops in New York, London, Athens, and Hobart.

Registration Information

In case of emergency, phone number is a required field if you are booking tickets for anyone under 18 years old. A mobile phone number is preferable.

TASWRITERS STUDENT MEMBER TICKETS:

Only 1 ticket per student member.

A maximum of 5 Student Member tickets per workshop.

CANCELLATION POLICY:

Cancelling your registration four days or more before the workshop: you can request a 50% refund of the fee.

Cancelling your registration within four days of the workshop: there is no refund of the fee. However, instead of forfeiting the fee, you can do another workshop for half price.