After Arcadia: Cy Twombly with Tamar Yoseloff
Use repurposing, erasure and collage to create new poems
The American artist Cy Twombly was known for his paintings that incorporated scattered phrases and scribbled words, a kind of personal graffiti. His source texts were often borrowed lines from poets, whose work he valued for their use of the ‘condensed phrase’.
This course is a pair with After Arcadia: Ian Hamilton Finlay, on 9 March. Students are welcome to sign up for both!
This workshop draws together some of Twombly’s favourite poets – including Catullus, Rilke and Cavafy – and considers how their words and ideas are fused with the act of painting. Participants will borrow some of Twombly’s techniques, such as gesture, repurposing of existing text and erasure / painting over, as methods to generate new poems.