Four One and Half Hour Weekly Sessions

Let’s pause, listen to words, move and write together.

These workshops aim to offer tools to support and inspire your own creative writing and poetry practice. During the workshops, I welcome you to collectively explore ways of conversing between our individual and collective bodies and that of the textual and filmic bodies.

The workshop spaces seeks to move through non-hierarchical conversations and to the unexpected sociability of the unknown encounters ahead of us, to pose a speculative space to think with the temporalities of creative writing and poetry practice.

Inspired by Dublin Art Book Fair, Ireland’s leading art book fair and Wendy Erskine's theme Polyphonic:

‘Erskine writes, "multiple voices; multiple narratives; multiple perspectives: the polyphonic. Whether it’s simultaneous or sequenced, whether it’s in visual art, text or sound, let’s celebrate polyphony in all its complexity and contrariness. Let’s explore this non-hierarchical, democratic mode which allows for plurality of expression and response. The polyphonic, a challenge to the controlling, totalising ‘I'."‘

Nature will tangle and entwine throughout the four-week sessions in varying ways, as it speaks to Poetry, Creative Writing and Art. Yet, Poetry, Creative Writing and Art will also be explored beyond these modes, to converse together with literary devices such as ekphrasis, in which a visual work of art is described in detail, how to structure narrative, holding readers, writing backwards, writing with joy whilst learning from Irish and Indigenous poetry and creative writing. This course entwines art and nature to experience the wonders of wildlife and green spaces all around us in a more mindful way, this includes our gardens, city parks, woods, nature reserves and beyond. Nature will tangle and entwine throughout the four-week sessions in varying ways, as it speaks to Poetry, Creative Writing and Art. Yet, Poetry, Creative Writing and Art will also be explored beyond the themes of nature, to converse together with literary devices such as ekphrasis, in which a visual work of art is described in detail, how to structure narrative, holding readers, writing backwards, writing with joy whilst learning from Irish and Indigenous poetry and creative writing.

The course will encompass LGBTQIA+ topics whilst decolonising, thinking with the power of creativity and nature collectively whilst having fun. All sessions will be full of inspiration from artists, poets and writers, as well as practical activities to try within and beyond, which includes online resources crafted especially for members of the course. The course is aimed at all those seeking to be more mindful in their everyday and looking for tools to release their own creativity. Each week, there is space for members to share thoughts and their own creativity and ask questions.

Week 1: Creative Writing thinking with nature

• Introductions and hopes and desires for this course

• Thinking from the ground - Memory and soil – ‘Chorus of Soil’, Binta Diaw, Liverpool Biennial 2023, speaking to ‘…collective acts mourning, hope, resistance, reparation, care and celebration of ancestral wisdom.’ Exhibition description

• How to plant and write together - Garden installations in contemporary art spaces – Vietnamese Immigration Garden at Documenta Fifteen 2022

• Exploring the beauty of abandoned places – how can we connect and write with architecture and histories of these spaces?

• Thinking kinship with Octavia E.Butler

• How to navigate writing personal histories, looking to Saidiya Hartman for inspiration – ‘Wayward Lives, Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals’

• Working with writing prompts to write within the session and to take beyond

• How to write with joy – practical activities

• End with a poem

Week 2: Creative Writing

• How to structure narrative and holding readers

• Delving into Point of View

• Thinking with the work of Janet Malcolm, who has delved into biographical convention – starting with photos given, then using personal photographs as writing prompts (members to bring a photo to the session). Writing activity around a radio voice

• Exploring autopoesis, Denise Ferreira da Silva and ‘writing the self into being

• Trying ekphrasis together, in which a visual work of art is described in detail

• Exploring the stories of Irish writer Claire Keegan

• How to write backwards

• Thinking with Irish artist Jesse Jones, how do we feel inspired by her work?

• Space for members to share responses from activities from within and beyond the sessions

• Introduction to activities to try after the session

• End with a poem

Week 3: Poetry

• Types of poetry – exploring poets that have explored nature as a tool for deeper stories/meaning

• Irish Poetry – Annemarie Ni Churreain, exploring the ‘…perspective of living in subliminal tension and surrounded by natural beauty.’ (Description of Bloodroot)

• Writing prompts to write poetry

• How to enter poetry, and write our own

• Dr Golnoosh Nour – focusing on ‘…transgression and desire in modern and contemporary fiction and poetry’ University of Reading bio

• How to enter poetry by Keats - To Autumn, 1819– how to write alongside the seasons with a kaleidoscopic of images

• Nature and Haikus – lets write our own together

  Pathways with Indigenous poetry

• Space for members to share responses from activities from within and beyond the sessions

• Introduction to activities to try after the session

• End with a poem

Week 4: Poetry and Creative Writing

• Thinking with flows of water – exploring ocean as archive and flowing writing, looking at the work of Phoebe Boswell, 2022 writer in residence at Whitechapel Gallery

• Embodied writing – activities within the session

• Tips from Margaret Atwood, what can we learn from her technique of looking in spaces in the home

• Marie Theresa to share her own writing, to initiate and explore freewriting together

• Wake Work, with Christina Sharpe, how to deploy literacy terms as a methodology for resistance, attention and imagining

• ·Trying ekphrasis together, in which a visual work of art is described in detail

• How to start a creative journal

• Space for members to share responses from activities from within and beyond the sessions

• Introduction to activities to try and take beyond the course

• End with a poem

Image from Marie Theresa’s film practice