Face to face

Be Happy!

So much historical and contemporary poetry is satisfied with a medium paced despondency written in a tranquilised state. In this workshop you will look at examples of poetry to consider how joy is arrived at. You'll explore ways to keep the poem rhetorically charged and vivacious in its engagement with structure, attitude and perspective, and then write lively, joyous poetry - exciting happy poetry that praises the world and those we love. Participants should expect to come away with at least two new poems and an invigorated view of the world! In association with Free Verse: The Poetry Book Fair.

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Daljit Nagra

Daljit Nagra (b. 1966) was the first poet to win the Forward Prize for both his first collection of poetry, in 2007, and for its title poem, 'Look, We Have Coming to Dover!', three years earlier. An earlier pamphlet, Oh My Rub! was a winner in the Poetry Business pamphlet competition, and was selected by the Poetry Book Society as a Pamphlet Choice. Nagra has also contributed to a collection of translations from Dutch, Uit het Hoofd, and won the Arts Council Decibel Award in 2008. Born in Middlesex, he now lives in London, where he works as an English teacher.

Nagra has described Look We Have Coming to Dover! as "obsessed with Asian-ness", and this can be seen in poems that use Punjabi-inflected English, narratives involving casual racism, and characters who seek the cultural signals of ladoos or saris. However, the work is also interested in Britishness, dealing with the points where these two conditions collide or coincide. Both 'Digging' and 'Look We Have Coming to Dover!' take models from acknowledged classics of English-language poetry, using Seamus Heaney and Matthew Arnold as predecessors with varying relations to Britain.

The shaping of his poems demonstrates with grace that craft is an important element to Nagra's poetry. The Observer has said "The poet's reading, like his words, is energetic and as alive as quicksilver".