Writing Funny Poems

Contact: editor@southbankpoetry.co.uk

How do you make the reader laugh out loud? What is acceptable and what isn’t? How exactly do poets like John Hegley manage to captivate the reader?

If you have ever tried to write a funny poem then you will know that provoking laughter in a reader or an audience is not as easy as it sounds. Funny poems are perhaps the hardest to write well since you can’t always predict how the reader or audience will react (if they react at all)!

This day workshop will look at ways of subverting the ordinary and writing the unexpected while writing funny poems!

Using jokes, stuffed animals and other poems as inspiration we will explore what works in a funny poem and what doesn’t, and how to capture that vital magical ingredient that makes for humour.

We will read and study writers like Billy Collins and poems such as The Secret Life of Barbie and Mr Potato Head, studying both childish and adult humour and seeing what we can take away from them as writers.

This session is suitable for beginners and those more advanced.

Price: £55.00

Time: 11:30am (Finishes at 5pm)