A one-day workshop as part of the Penzance Literary Festival

10 am –4 pm

Tickets £40 in advance from Redwing Gallery, or Eventbrite:

Wild Words: Techniques to Liberate your Writing and Storytelling. Tickets, Tue 12 Jul 2022 at 10:00 | Eventbrite

As writers, storytellers and poets our task is to find ways to express what is beyond words, to make people see differently and to convey the vastest via the smallest signs – those ink marks on the page. This is a practical day brim full of small writing experiments to help you achieve that.

Bridget will begin with the premise that storytelling is fundamental to organismic self-regulation; through it, human beings survive, and thrive.

We’ll look at the (often unconscious) structures and techniques that we apply when telling effective stories, as well as gain an equal understanding of what, at times, sabotages that process.

Turning traditional creative writing on its head, rather than just applying ‘fixes’ on the page, you’ll be encouraged to reconnect with your embodied experience as a starting point for investigating a range of subjects including sensory impressions, body sensations, emotion, point of view, the narrative arc, rhythm, tension, voice, character and dialogue.

It’s a day designed to help you develop your love of word crafting and give you confidence in your natural storyteller abilities.

Transform your experience into poetry

Sunday 12th June 2022

10am- 5pm

Studio 34 - Integrative Arts Psychotherapy space

Bickerton House, Bickerton Road

Archway, London. N19 5JT

Cost: £80. A limited number of concessionary places are available.

Please contact hello@wildwords.org to book your place, or for further information.

Using a process known as ‘found verse’ Bridget will facilitate a safe group space in which, using verbatim words as a basis, you’ll transform experiences – from joyful to traumatic – into spoken and written poems.

In the process, we’ll share experiences, track down our authentic voice and discover the stories we truly need to tell. You’ll come away with both individually and collaboratively crafted work.

To support this process there will be readings of inspirational poems and art, montage and body awareness exercises.

Bridget will address subjects including sensory impressions, body sensations, emotion, point of view, the narrative arc, rhythm, tension, voice, character and dialogue, form, working with personal and/or traumatic material, and the role of storytelling in enabling human beings to survive and thrive.

We’ll explore the (often unconscious) structures and techniques that, when we sit down to write, creates the idea of ‘block’, as well as gain an equal understanding of how to arrive at ‘flow’.

By the end of the workshop you’ll have used the smallest signs to covey the most vast, transformed the unspeakable into words, and laughed a great deal with like-minded souls.

Some parts of the day will take place in the nearby park or heath. Please bring coldproof, waterproof clothing, writing materials (laptops welcome but please also bring hand writing materials) and lunch. Tea/coffee and cake will be provided. No previous familiarity (or confidence) with words is required! Suitable for your own creative/therapeutic exploration as well as for therapists/teachers wishing to develop skills for client, student and patients groups.

‘The One True Word Project’ and the process known as ‘found verse’ was developed by psychotherapist, writer and founder of Wild Words Bridget Holding in response to distressing world situations. It offers safe group spaces, word-crafting skills and a public platform to enable the processing of emotion and the communicating of experience through words. The project publishes poetry and short prose online. Work is also read aloud on the ground where it has been written, and sent in letter form to interested parties.

Barnwell Country Park. As part of the Oundle Festival of Literature.

Nature writing is now one of the fastest growing genres; the new generation of nature writers are selling like hot cakes. Come and find out about the market, and how to write for it.

It’s no longer the idealised rural life and landscapes of the pastoral poetry tradition. It’s raw, edgy, groundbreaking, thought-provoking, politically challenging, and society changing. It takes in poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. It fuses nature writing, travel writing, philosophy and psychology. Its writers heal and find meaning through contact with nature, and so do its readers.

Us nature-writers are no longer regarded as something akin to train spotters. We’re cooler than Madonna! Join us. 

Tickets available from  http://www.oundlelitfest.org.uk/