Poetry Sundays

We will start each session by looking closely at poems & paintings, warm up with some writing exercises and head out for a quiet river walk from Putney Bridge towards Hammersmith and back.

…‘like shedding a skin’

‘It was a completely new experience for me. I had no idea of the depth and breadth of what you were offering, especially the depth. You took me into various poems and paintings to which I would not have had that kind of access.’

…‘so enjoyed the day’

'We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day.'

Henry David Thoreau

Wednesdays in the Gallery

Every picture tells a story. Using paintings and photographs as a starting point we will look at the ways artists & poets capture & frame the moment. Come ready to develop your responses into poems & prose of your own. Start the day with coffee, poetry, discussion & some writing warm-ups, before exploring the Gallery. Venues to be confirmed.

‘Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.’ 

Rachel Carson

Poetry Sundays

Three writing workshops February to April

'Will there be apples where now there is a sleeve of blossom?’ Lucy Ingrams

Trees and plants provide us with some of our most powerful images & metaphors for growth & transformation – leaf, blossom, bud, fruit, root & seed. These writing sessions will focus on nature as place of escape & renewal, and as an aspect of our deepest ecological engagement. We’ll explore poems & paintings, & take a walk along the river path to connect deeply with our observation. Bring a notepad you are comfortable to use while on the hoof – hardback is best - & a sketchpad if you like to draw.

Out of the darkness: ‘open again/in the cold light of earliest spring’ Louise Glück

Witness the emergence of the new, unearthing winter’s secret life.

‘A light exists in spring’ Emily Dickinson

Unravel the contradictions of early spring, the shape of unexpected light.

‘the eyelids of the pollen open’ Pablo Neruda

New beginnings: love, pilgrimage and the wild extravagance of nature.

Trace the development of the sonnet from its origins in the medieval courts of Europe, & finally follow it across the Atlantic to find its poetic DNA in the work of three 20th century American poets. We will also explore ways in which the structure and imagery used by these poets might give us new ways into written portraits of our own.

4 weeks

‘All the remembered places, I am never far away from them. I long to renew them in writing.’ Katherine Mansfield

This course will consider the shaping power of domestic interiors and memory, focussing on the writing of Katherine Mansfield. We will begin by looking at ‘Prelude’ & ‘At the Bay’ from The Garden Party, exploring the ways in which these stories can illuminate our own writing about place and home.

4 weeks

Wandering, reading, writing -- these three activities are for me intimately linked. They are all ways of observing both the inner and the outer weather, of being carried away, of getting lost and returning. Edward Hirsch