Poetry Day: Heading Out

About

What better way to spend a day than at Charleston reading and writing poetry? These day poetry retreats at Charleston are designed to give you the inspiration, tools and guidance necessary to begin your journey into poetry.

The day will be full of creative activities, with coffee and biscuit breaks, and a delicious lunch included. In the morning, we will begin with a few loosening up exercises, designed to silence self-criticism and get the ink flowing. We will then read and discuss a selection of poems to use as inspiration. Through a series of guided exercises, we will begin drafting our own poems.

In the afternoon we will work on our drafts, introducing editing techniques that distil, tighten and clarify. By the end of the day you will leave with pages of notes, writing and editing techniques, a finished poem and new poetry friends! This is just the beginning - everything you learn in this one day can be used again, to prompt new poems in your writing process.

The two big themes of this day course are nature and travel. Through the prism of John Clare, Wendell Berry, Alice Oswald, Elizabeth Bishop and others, we will explore what it might mean to encounter the natural world in poetry. If the weather holds, we will take our workshop into the garden!

Join us for our other seasonal retreats:

Winter Poetry Retreat

Spring Poetry Retreat