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Our Remote Workshops are pitched at anyone wanting to enjoy a ‘work-out’ and/or kick-start a new selection of work. We also aim to keep our prices low enough for all to access.
The workshops involve many varied exercises to stimulate new writing, some involving experimenting with formal forms and other approaches you may not have tried. They include notes and discussion points, simulating thoughts and comments of the sort that might be exchanged between participants in a ‘live’ workshop.
To buy any of the workshops listed below, please go to our online shop and pay using the Donations button, and e-mail our Administrator with the title(s) of the workshop(s) you are buying.
Not with a bang…, by Anne Stewart
… “ but a whimper” – so says T S Eliot.
This workshop invites you to explore a few Endings or at least look them straight in the eye … Hopefully, you will also have a little fun. We are so focussed sometimes on being taken seriously that we forget to let our hair down now and again … but aren’t some of our favourite poems ones that make us laugh? The Endings we will explore here are uncomfortable ones – how humanity might meet its end, how the world, the solar system and beyond might cease to be, and how we personally might like to ‘shuffle off’ … These are challenging, but the aim is to enjoy some wild flights of imagination, exploit humorous possibilities and, perhaps, confront the odd fear or taboo along the way.
The Last Taboo?, Sarah Westcott
In this workshop: a space to explore ways of writing about, or ‘through’ death, this most abstract yet personal of subjects. In Western society, a focus on endings might be feared as morbid or even taboo. But poetry can transcend these silences to articulate ‘truths’ beyond our everyday reckonings, opening up spaces for thought, enquiry and even healing. Mortality, ever-present at the edge of our lives, has entered wider societal conversations, from planetary to personal concerns. Everyone has their own relationship with death, a relationship that changes throughout life. This workshop encourages you to approach the theme of endings with openness and curiosity – to be playful yet focused with the aim of generating fresh material using experimental approaches.
Workshops are supplied as pdf file(s) by e-mail. £12 for one or £20 for both. Buy
A full-day workshop (5 hours plus). Price: £8. Supplied as pdf file by e-mail. Buy
Time plays a central role in every aspect of our lives. The workshop explores ways in which we perceive time and how we represent these perceptions in writing.
Past experience crucially influences how we view the present and future. Earth’s distant past, cosmological time are difficult to imagine … Clock time is fixed but our impressions of time are subjective – an hour’s enjoyable exercise session will seem to be over quickly, but the minutes drag during a boring lecture…
Would it be helpful to have feedback on your work from the workshop tutor? For an additional £15 fee payable directly to Myra Schneider you can get feedback and pointers on one poem which has come out of the workshop. Please send the poem (either hard copy or as an e-mail attachment) and payment to Myra, cheques made out to ‘Myra Schneider’, together with your e-mail address. Myra will send you her comments by e-mail. Myra’s land address is: 130 Morton Way, Southgate, London N14 7AL and her e-mail address is here
8 workshops, each with a suggested minimum time of 2 hours and with extended working options to boost them up to 4-5 hours; overall, a full short poetry course. The series is drawn on poems in all sections of Fanfare, Second Light’s anthology published in November 2015. “This unique collection showcases some truly wonderful poetry: inspiring, enriching and consoling – a deeply pleasurable read.” – Hannah Lowe.
The series titles and outlines (fuller descriptions in the Prospectus):
1. A FOCUS ON OBJECTS – a seed, a gift given or received – have resonance which we may draw on. Also looks at the Pantoum form.
2. TELLING A STORY – handling narrative effectively; using invention, story and fable.
3. USING ‘VOICE’ – a bird, a refugee, a suicide? The scope for using non-standard English and ‘song’
4. KEEPING UP WITH ‘NOW’ – considers change and contrast through time; what has disappeared, newly appeared. Modern mind-sets and the List Poem.
5. OFF-THE-BEATEN-TRACK SUBJECT MATTER – the specialised or obscure, now up for grabs? Inspiration from data-rich sources. Also looks at the Couplet form.
6. THE POETRY OF PROTEST & PERSUASION – the timeless nature of protest poetry – bad manners or major evil. Dialogue poetry and address to the supreme being …
7. TRANSFORMING EVENTS & FEELINGS – extended metaphor, fantasy, magic realism, dream etc; the richness of our image hoards; exploring trauma and a look at the Prose Poem.
8. THE (ALMOST) LOVE POEM – considers how contemporary poets tend to approach the theme of love from oblique angles, at times through old forms. Starting a poem from ‘the periphery’ exploiting the paradoxes of falling love, and using the Sonnet and Ghazal.
The workshops can be bought as single workshops, or as the full series, and by individuals who wish to work on them alone or tutors/leaders who wish to use them in a group of 5 or more. We have kept the price extremely low – starting at £8 for a single workshop for individual working (reliant on having or buying a copy of Fanfare) – well below what the rate should be for such a substantial body of authorial work, therefore, though tutors/leaders may customise the workshops as they wish, they may not copyright or publish adaptations. The copyright of these workshops is held by Dilys Wood.
Prospectus & Prices
Order Form
or Buy online
8 workshops, each with a suggested minimum time of 2 hours and with extended working options to boost them up to 4-5 hours; overall, a full short poetry course. The series is linked with the eight sections of Her Wings of Glass, Second Light’s anthology published in October 2014, which Moniza Alvi has called “tremendously inspiring”.
The series titles and outlines: (Workshop numbers correspond with Section number in Her Wings of Glass
1. ENCOUNTERS with the natural world – the focus is on describing living creatures /plant life; writing poems ‘in voice’; the Haiku form.
2. SAVING THE PLANET – the focus is on writing politically; writing about water; Concrete Poetry; laying the poem out on the page.
3. WAR ON HUMANITY – the focus is on: writing ‘slant’ about our experience of threatening events; the use of formal forms, including the sonnet, to ‘contain’ and control difficult / emotive subject matter.
4. THE HUMAN FAMILY: suffering and survival – the focus is on: writing about ‘family’, including abuse; using the Pantoum poetic form; using ‘Big Metaphor’.
5. THE HEART’S AFFECTIONS – the focus is on: having ‘crushes’; writing convincingly about intimacy; the Ghazal poetic form.
6. MAKING: creativity & invention – the focus is on places where we write; metaphorical descriptions of the creative process; the funny side of ‘welcoming the muse’.
7. LOOKING FOR MEANING – the focus is on poems which develop theories (including two poems on the development of children); constructing poems around questions; the prose poem.
8. IMAGINATION: visions, dreams, imagining – the focus is on poems based on dreams; poems referring to ghosts; ‘magic realism’.
The workshops can be bought as single workshops, or as the full series, and by individuals who wish to work on them alone or tutors/leaders who wish to use them in a group of 5 or more. We have kept the price extremely low – starting at £8 for a single workshop for individual working (reliant on having or buying a copy of Her Wings of Glass) – well below what the rate should be for such a substantial body of authorial work, therefore, though tutors/leaders may customise the workshops as they wish, they may not copyright or publish adaptations. The copyright of these workshops is held by Dilys Wood.
Prospectus & Prices
Order Form
or Buy online
