The Chrysanthemum’s Last Stand – Keep your Poetry Flowering

Each November challenges plants and people to defy the darkness. Recent times have demanded extra resilience. Inspired by perennials from poets such as Louise Gluck, Jackie Kay, James Schuyler or Helen Dunmore we will keep creative, keep growing and nurture beautiful, hardy lines and leaves to overwinter with

Writing with Fire into Fire

This is a workshop that looks at our current environmental and planetary crisis and encourages you to bring more boldness, edginess and fire into your poems.

The Personal is Political

This slogan has been around for a long time, but what does it mean for us as poets? In this workshop we will challenge notions around the personal and the political, breaking down the boundaries between the two to give a voice to what we really want to say.

Writing Poems after Tamil Poetry from Sri Lanka

We will examine how a translator is a bridge-builder from one language to another. No experience of translation or knowledge of Tamil is required, a literal translation will be provided. We will experiment with how words dance around meaning, and how meaning travels between languages. We will write new poems inspired by, and in response to contemporary Tamil poems on the aftermath of war and conflict'

The Long Hollow Feeling -- Writing Aloneness and Desire 

'I'm having a hard time writing about Sunday. Getting the long hollow feeling of Sundays. No mail and faraway lawnmowers, the hopelessness' -- Point of View, Lucia Berlin

'Minute by minute, I do not get up and just / go to him -- /... It is what I do now: not go, not / see or touch.' -- Not Going to Him, Sharon Olds 

In this workshop we will attempt to get to the long hollow feelings of aloneness and desire. We will read and discuss the works of Lucia Berlin and Sharon Olds. How do they overcome the hard work of communicating a 'hollow'? -- and how can we employ some of their techniques in our own work to write poems that reach in and out. 
 

Writing Queer Poetry about Nature 

In this interactive zoom poetry workshop, participants will explore the queerness of the Aldeburgh coast with its fluid seas, shifting sands and boundary-eroding coast. As a group, participants will also read and discuss several queer nature poems then write their own poems in response. 

Answering Back                             

In this workshop we'll explore the idea of writing direct responses to existing poems, old and new – turning solos into duets, monologues into correspondence. Want to refuse Auden's edict to stop all the clocks? Or tell Mary Oliver "I do have to be good, I cannot let myself off the hook"? Start here; we'll discuss examples from The Nymph's Reply onward, and come up with our own

Writing the Wordless

Writing into the world of mental health and aspects of life for which there are often no words at all, or only abstractions.

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Signs, Names, Marks and Constraint

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Explore how Data Lists, Directions and Design can be incorporated into your poetic practice to push towards the conceptual, the visual and offer new approaches to the lyrical

In this workshop, we will explore the power of names, with reference to British Sign Language, poets including Alice Oswald and Jen Hadfield, and look at poems that use names to explore human and environmental loss where many species are on the Red List of Threatened Species. In a world where access to our digital lives revolves around remembering names, we will write an authentication poem in response to these constraints and finally look at how when names and words falter, marks and glyphs can offer new creative directions. 

Light about the Darkness

Develop rapport with your readers and welcome them into poems where dark subjects are handled with humour and a light touch.

With inspiration offered in the words of Matthew Dickman, Billy Collins, Ella Frears, Paul Birtill and Joe Dunthorne.

In John Clare's Boots: Writing Journeys 

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John Clare was a great poet of walking. Using his poems, my memoir and the journal of Clare's walk from Epping Forest to Peterborough as prompts for reliving our recent or past journeys, you'll be invited to explore the precise imagery of Clare's observations and to create your own.

Working More Safely with Dangerous Subjects

Poetry and ‘difficult’ subjects offer a natural fit. But how can we help avoid re-victimising ourselves, and our readers? Forward Prize short-listed poet Alice Hiller will run a hands-on workshop and discussion exploring using found materials to create agency and play, thereby keeping ourselves safer when writing into potentially dangerous spaces.

Writing Around Pop Culture

Write new poems in response to an intriguing array of clips in this fast-paced workshop! All you need is curiosity and a sense of play as we infuse our poems with pop culture.  

The Poetry of Truth

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In this workshop we will explore the poet's dedication to Truth, using examples of Ethiopian poems about fakery and injustice to spark your own poems. Chris will also reference his new collection 'Tenderfoot' which confronts hard truths behind his enduring love for this beautiful country and people. How do poets deal with inequality/injustice? How do they represent Truth?

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