Poetics of Imagination
A Course in Story, Poetry and the Oral Arts
October 2025 – June 2026
Poetics of Imagination is a unique, innovative course that bring together artistic creativity, poetic wisdom and philosophical inquiry. Delving into myths, drama, wisdom traditions, story and poetry, we draw from their unique goodness and enduring relevance and unleash the extraordinary energy they have to offer the world of today.
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Marrying practice with reflection and creativity with inquiry, we will explore epochal myths, track poems on the land, converse with the flow of rivers and learn from the timeless, astonishing resources that lie deep in the wellspring of the imagination.
This course uniquely draws on the gifts of the oral arts as a source of inspiration for future generation of thinkers and artists. No previous experience is necessary: we welcome deep thinkers, writers, storytellers, songwriters, activists, practitioners, farmers, dreamers and students of all backgrounds and paths in life.
Offered in the caring and convivial spirit of Schumacher education, Poetics of Imagination is an extraordinary opportunity to explore the poetic imagination as a unique pathway into what makes us human, and thus singularly entangled with others and with the more-than-human universe.
The course takes place both in person and online.
Residential Dates:
Module 1: 24 October - 2 November 2025
Module 2: 20 February - 1 March 2026
Module 3: 15 - 26 June 2026
Module 1 - Wisdom and Water
Residential: 24 October - 2 November 2025, Location TBC (Devon, UK)
Was the world made from timeless seas? Why is wisdom like water? Is it true that myths are stories that ‘never were but always are’? Why is poetry called ‘news which stays news’?
Delving into Creation Myths, Wisdom Books and other ancient tales, we will uncover the primordial significance of story and narrative, a power that continues to inform how human beings understand themselves and their world. We will explore the deep time of myths, the eternal arts of memory, the flow of wisdom traditions and their profound connections with springs, wells, rivers and seas.
Module 2 - Drama and the Earth
Residential: 20 February - 1 March 2026, Le Campus de la Transition (Paris, France)
Do words live in the earth and does the earth live in our words? How do we visit the underworld, and why does it matter? What is the cosmic meaning of human action in an entangled universe?
This module engages with the regenerative and transformative power of drama, its ability to bind together human community and re-assemble humanity’s connections with the earth and the natural world. We will explore the initiation dramas of Orpheus, Osiris and Persephone, their associations with the underworld and with organic renewal. Our journey into drama will also take us to explore the truth-bearing power and insights into cosmic justice in the dramas of Aeschylus, Euripides and Shakespeare.
Module 3 - Poetry and Birdsong
Residential: 15 - 26 June 2026, Selgars Mill (Devon, UK)
Is poetry the natural speech of the imagination? Does it cross the divide between the human and the more-than-human? Does it speak blackbird? How and why does it weave connections and relationships?
This module explores poetic attention and imagination as a deep exercise in learning to attend to the surprising articulacy of the world. We will engage with birdsong as a primary source of poetic metre, from those we hear in woods and gardens to those who sing in poems, in Homer, Ovid and Chaucer, from Daffyd ap Gwylum to Seamus Heaney. Through this, we will explore if the poetic imagination itself is like birdsong, and how it continues to participate in the interweaving of the universe, as the common tongue between its beings and its things.
Fees:
Full programme (module 1, 2, & 3): 5 800 GBP
Module 1 & 2: 4 100 GBP
Module 1 (Standalone): 2 300 GBP
*Fees includes all meals and shared twin accommodation. For single occupancy requests, please contact General Enquiries at info@satishkumarfoundation.co.uk.
Course structure :
Module 1: 10 residential days and 5 online sessions (including teaching session, tutorials and a symposium)
Module 2: 10 residential days and 8 online sessions (including teaching session, tutorials and a symposium)
Module 3: 14 residential days and 4 online sessions (including teaching session, tutorials and a symposium)
Leading this Course
Dr 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.
