Seminar 6.9: Barbara Hepworth and the self never sculpted: Can Hepworth’s use of the maquette in her sculptural practice inform a new creative practice in poetry?

When and where: Thursday 11th September 2025 from 1-2 pm in Grosvenor East room 206 and on Teams, with optional extension until 2.30pm for in-person attendees. Tea, coffee, juice and snacks provided.

Presenter: Wendy Allen. Wendy is a poet and is in her 3rd year of full-time PhD research. Her creative-critical thesis considers Barbara Hepworth’s (1903-1975) use of the maquette to inform a re-making of poetic form. Focussing on the precariousness of the maquette, Wendy suggests that by disrupting the idea of the final model as superior enables a new poetics to emerge, one which gives equal placing to the inner workings and measuring of (a) form.

Format/topic: Wendy will begin the session by introducing the maquette: a small preliminary model created to test ideas and proportions. Maquettes are often overlooked, lost or destroyed, and yet, when they are considered independently, are crucial sites of thought, experimentation and becoming. Through feminist theory and the Maquinette (a sequence of disrupted sonnets), Wendy suggests that the maquette enables a re-evaluation of how we see these unseen contributions.

There will be a discussion following the paper, and it may be of interest to consider the inter-disciplinary aspect to the research (Creative Writing and Art History) in terms of a broader context and how this could work with other disciplines.

Preparation: You do not need to read anything beforehand, but it may be of interest to look at some images of Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures and maquettes.

Tea, coffee, juice and snacks provided.

Email Loretta to say whether you would like to attend online or in person, and if you have any dietary requirements (all snacks are vegetarian).