Tender Leaves Translation Courses

  • Duration

    3 hours and 40 minutes

  • Video

    8 sessions

    Audio and downloadable audio files for each session

  • PDF Handouts

    All example poems and annotations

    Closing tips for the integration of skills

    Highlights of the Bonus Conversation

  • Bonus Material

    Bonus Conversation with Chloë Goodchild about poetry and sound

    The Art of Listening: Poetry and Developing Your Ear as a Writer

    One of the things we need to develop as both writers and translators is our ear: our capacity to hear all that is happening in a piece of writing.

    In the process of cultivating this capacity, learning to listen to poetry can be fundamentally important, even if you primarily write or translate prose.

    These 7 sessions are designed to help you do the following 4 essential things:

    Perceive Meaningful Repetition

    Sharpen your perception of different kinds of repetition, both the more obvious kinds of repetition and the more subtle kinds, asking in every instance what makes a repetition meaningful.

    Learn to Hear and Feel Rhythm

    Learn to hear and feel rhythm, one of the writer’s most central and fundamental tools for conveying energy—feeling, nuance, and power—in writing.

    Discover Forms of Consonance and Assonance

    Learn to hear different kinds of consonance and assonance as indispensable elements of well-written poetry and prose.

    Connect What You Hear With What You Write

    Gain helpful and practical tools for connecting what you hear in a poem with what you are able to convey on the page as a writer yourself.
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    WHAT'S INCLUDED

    • 8 video sessions (3 hours of video)
    • Audio for each session
    • Downloadable audio files for each session
    • PDFs of all example poems and annotations
    • PDF of closing tips for the integration of skills
    • PDF with highlights of the Bonus Conversation
    • Bonus 40-minute conversation on poetry and sound with Chloë Goodchild

    Learn to Listen as a Poet

    You will learn how to perceive meaningful repetition, hear and feel verbal rhythms, and discover the subtle but powerful workings of consonance and assonance.

    Even more important, you will come to have a greater sensitivity to language that will nourish your own translating and writing.

    Few practices can open more doors than learning to listen deeply.

    Connect Your Ear and Your Voice

    Gain helpful and practical tools for connecting what you hear in a poem with what you are able to convey on the page as a writer yourself.

    You will discover how developing your ear can help add additional power, grace, and nuance to everything you write and say.

    In addition, you will also discover greater pleasure in and insight into the hidden powers of words.
    Meet the instructor

    Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma

    Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma is an author, translator, teacher, and performer. His translation of the classical Tamil masterpiece on ethics, power, and love, The Kural: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural, was published to great acclaim by Beacon Press. Other books include The Safety of Edges (poems), Give, Eat, and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar (translated from the Tamil) and Body and Earth (with the artist C.F. John). He speaks and performs widely, teaches for the Cozy Grammar series of online video courses, and has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, 4Culture, Artist Trust, and the U. S. Fulbright Program. thomaspruiksma.com
    Patrick Jones - Course author