This workshop explores how the embodied practices of walking, listening and careful observation offer tools for the creation of powerful writing. ‘Tuning’ experiences rooted in the natural environment can help writers to access the ‘imaginal,’ or what Jung called the collective unconscious, home of the archetypes. Artists have also been known to call this the Muse; inventors, inspiration. Nature based practices combined with the writer’s craft can shape this inspiration into pieces of work that truly sing from the page.
Taking place outside at The Heavens, just outside of Stroud in Gloucestershire, participants will learn how to slow down and relate to the environment in altered states such as walking blind by touch. This workshop will include instruction in other nature-based practices such as the four directions, forming intention and creating a threshold to step into a solo experience of nature and yourself and to make notes, or indeed pieces, from that experiential space and place. Solo time for reflection at either end of the session will leave you with a wealth of primary source material to develop after your time in The Heavens has come to a close.
Suitable for writers working at any level, including beginners, and in any form.
Date: Saturday 20th May
Timing: 9am - 1pm
Venue: The Heavens. Meet at Daisy Bank.
Tutor
Alun Hughes
Alun is a poet and singer living in Stroud, Gloucestershire. In 2020, he received a MA Creative Writing with Distinction from Bath Spa University. In 2021, he was a digital writer in residence with Dialect at the Cotswold Water Park and won third prize in the Troubadour International Poetry Competition. In 2022, he was shortlisted for the Laurie Lee Prize. Alun started working on land in 2000 as a farmhand on an organic farm just north of Lewes, Sussex. Since then, he has worked as a woodsman, yurt maker, hedge layer, teacher of woodland management and green woodwork. In 2008, he became involved in designing and facilitating courses in nature based practice and wilderness work. Alun’s poetry pamphlet Down the Heavens, is published by Yew Tree Press. Somewhere Somewhere, an album of nine poems from the collection to original soundtracks, made with the band Lensmen, is out now on the Irregular Patterns label.
