Writing For Earth
Writing For Earth is an eight week course, designed to creatively empower people who are ‘Writing For Earth’, be that if you are writing for yourself, for your own work, or for an Earth based cause environmental charity.
The course is designed to challenge, bring light to and stretch the way in which we meet, through language, writing, poetry, our relationship with our world.
It is rooted in the belief, that we need to meet the world and nature with a language that moves out of worn ideologies and scripts around environmentalism, towards a language that is more soulful, inspired, rousing, engaging, and which is anchored from a place of having more fully deeply met the world we live in.
We need great writing, to meet the urgency, of the times we are living in. We need people who can speak to the various crises we face with ferocity and tenderness, beauty and truth.
For milennia, bards and poets have written into and lyrically brought to life the relationship between humanity and nature, between what is seen and unseen of our world.
Now, more than ever, we need epic writing and language, to meet our relationship with our world, and to meet our current civilisation’s forgetfulness and miasma, with ourselves as part, of all living things.
We need poetry and writing that can support people to remember ourselves as intimately connected with the ecology and ecosystems of our planet, and with ourselves as part of life.
We need writing that both supports us to deepen our connection with our world and that supports the change that is necessary, and that is arriving, at this time on Earth.
WHAT WE COVER
I offer a number of pieces, to support Earth-based environmental causes to cut-through the noise of the environmental spaces.
Orality and Living Language Practice
Somatic and Spiritual Practice
History of, and evolution of Nature, Earth-relational writing
Creative Writing Practice
Creative Writing Guidance and Study
Individual and collective Myth and Story telling practice.
WINDOWS OF EXPLORATION
We will dive, into a number of key windows that feel vital and neccessary to meet our relationship with Earth, to support us to traverse together, and meet key territories of our times. Below are a number of windows, among others, that we will gaze into and work with together.
HUMAN/EARTH RELATIONSHIP
What we have forgotten
What we have lost
Where we want to resist change
Where we want to catalyse change
Writing to Meet Crisis
Retelling the Human Story and Creating Human Stories For Earth
EARTH AND NATURE
Earth Awe, Earth Reverance, Earth Wonder
Earth as a Cosmo-centric being
Writing into the kingdoms of nature.
Writing As Part of Life. The electric creativity of the one.
Body of Earth.
Self As Love Child of Spirit and Matter.
THE CALL AND THE PRAYER.
My hope, is that Writing For Earth can become a living portal, for the creation of writing, poetry, lyric that has the power to change, and shift, our relationship with ourselves, our common humanity, and the world.
I am interested more than anything here, about creating a culture of epic creation, where each writer is supported, enabled, and challenged to fulfil their creative, artistic potential, in service to life.
This means pushing the edges of art, taking wild creative risks with our work, daring to create that which electric, beautiful, which hums with life, and that is able to resonate into the world. This is the kind of writing I am interested in supporting people towards.
MY WORK AND BACKGROUND
I am a dedicated to earth in transition, supporting people, ideas and projects that I believe in.
My main projects are my writing work, through my collection of poems Rite of Passage, my activism and my work through For Earth, and The Living Language of Our World.
My writing has been widely published and anthologised in leading national and international magazines and journals including Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, Magma, Ambit, Iota, The North, Oxford Poetry, The New European, Best British Poetry, Staying Human: new poems for Staying Alive (Bloodaxe Books, 2020), and 100 Poems to Save The World (Seren 2021).
My first collection and poems from it have received a number of awards and prizes including: An Eric Gregory Award, a Jerwood/Arvon Mentorship, ‘The Opened Field’ won The 2017 National Poetry Competition, ‘Snow Country’ won The 2014 Magma Poetry Prize, and ‘Brother’ won 2nd Prize in The 2017 Resurgence Ecopoetry Competition.
My work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, has been turned into award-winning film that has been shown at film festivals around the world, and I have taught and lectured for various arts institutions and universities in the UK and The U.S.
FORMAT OF COURSE
FORMAT
19th of July - 14th September
COST
£390
Eight Weeks
Three Full Day Sessions
Eight 2 hr weekly calls
1 1 1/2 Hr Direct Feedback Session
Group feedback pods
WHAT I HOPE YOU WILL GAIN FROM THE COURSE
Greater Writing Skills
Greater understanding of form, linguistics, poetics, and orality.
Greater ability to be able to more clearly communicate core pieces that are important to you.
Greater ability to speak with a living language inhabiting your body
Greater ability to ground into the times we are living in, and be able to speak about it.
Lyric Authorship. Sonic Resonance. LyricAuthorship.
