Poetics of Imagination
A Week End Course, In Collaboration with Proposition Bethnal Green
23-24 August 2025
Proposition Studios, London
Tickets: £30
Is it true that myths are stories that ‘never were but always are’? Is poetry the natural speech of the imagination? How and why does it weave connections and relationships with the more-than-human? Why is wisdom like water? What is the cosmic meaning of human action in an entangled universe?
This short course explores the poetic imagination as a unique pathway into learning what makes us, as humans, deeply and creatively interwoven with the more-than-human universe. Delving into timeless resources of myth, poetry, story and wisdom traditions, we will draw from their unique goodness and enduring relevance and unleash the extraordinary energy and astonishing insights they still have to offer to our contemporary situations.
Offered in the convivial spirit of Schumacher College education and in partnership with the vibrant arts and ecology community of Proposition, this course presents a unique opportunity to explore, learn with and creatively respond to the resources of the poetic imagination with curiosity, openness and care.
No previous experience is necessary: we welcome artists, deep thinkers, writers, storytellers, songwriters, activists, practitioners, dreamers and all others, from all backgrounds and all paths in life.
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23-24 August 2025 / Proposition Studios, London
Course Tutors
Valentin Gerlier
Dr Valentin Gerlier, scholar, songwriter, and musician, led the MA Poetics of Imagination programme at Schumacher College and Dartington Arts School. He is also a Tutor and academic board member at the Temenos Academy, a Research Associate at the Margaret Beaufort Institute, Cambridge, and a Visiting Lecturer at several institutions. His latest book is Shakespeare and the Grace of Words (Routledge, 2022).
Valentin's teaching and writing span a wide range of subjects, including Shakespeare, William Blake, Dante, Rainer Maria Rilke, Kathleen Raine, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, W.B. Yeats, Ivan Illich, Heraclitus, John Scotus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa, and the Western contemplative and mystical traditions. His current research explores the poetic wisdom of nature in pre-modern texts (e.g., Eriugena, Hildegard of Bingen, and Bernardus Sylvestris), contemplative philosophies of nature, and the poetics and metaphysics of ritual and liturgy.
Valentin holds an MA from the University of Kent and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has published in journals such as Journal of the Philosophy of Education, Heythrop Journal, Religions, Medieval Mystical Theology, Temenos Academy Review, and Modern Theology.
Alice Oswald
Alice Oswald co-led MA poetics of Imagination at Schumacher College and Dartington Arts School. She studied Classics at Oxford and then trained as a gardener. She has written six collections of poetry.
In 2019, she took up the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry. Her most recent collection, Nobody, reworks Homer's The Odyssey. Her first collection, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won the Forward poetry prize for best first collection. In 2002, she won the TS Eliot for Dart, about the river in Devon.
Proposition
Proposition are working with artists to reimagine the human as part of ecology and find pathways toward a future of ecological resilience and abundance. Find out more at www.propositionstudios.com
