The Climate of Change poetry workshops June/July 2022 – waiting list
Supported by
| ..let us make no mistake: the climate crisis is also a crisis of culture, and thus of imagination.
… the Anthropocene presents a challenge not only to the arts and humanities, but also to our commonsense understandings and beyond that to contemporary culture… Amitav Ghosh (The Great Derangement) |
NOTE: This event has sold out, contact me using this form TO BE ADDED TO THE WAITING LIST and include the name of the event – I often draw on a waiting list. There maybe space available this time round OR in the next series later in the year. I’ll draw on the waiting list for the next round too.
Four online workshops of reading, discussing, writing poetry and inspiring each other
Our world is changing. These poetry workshops focus on climate change and also in expanding our outlook. Facing climate change will involve adapting almost everything we do. It means looking at the world afresh, more deeply and questioning structures, lifestyles and cultural assumptions – everything!
Of course, colonial thinking needs to be questioned more deeply, and long-standing injustices addressed because climate change is racist. It disproportionally affects people of colour and Indigenous communities. These communities are typically least responsible for the causes of climate disaster.
We will explore cherishing and re-envisaging our world, and caring for ourselves and others. We need innovation, understanding, adaptation and resilience as our climate changes and as we try to do what we can.
Climate change can be a complex, difficult and overwhelming subject to explore and write about. Writing together is more enjoyable, nurturing, rewarding and productive.
Who can join?
Anyone who has a passion for the topic and for poetry. Ideally, you have some experience of writing. The workshops are suitable for all levels.
The timing is suited to UK and European time zones. Poets writing in English in UK and Ireland can join, but also Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Israel, Finland, Denmark, Spain, Holland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. (The limitation is linked to the project funding.) However, I hope to make the programme available to Aussies and others in the future.
Timing
Thursdays : 30 June, 7, 14, 21 July. Workshops run 7pm to 9.30pm UK time, online on Zoom
Plus a public reading 7pm on 28th July
If you can’t make all 4, just let me know.
A useful link for checking other timezones: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
There will be another series of workshops with fresh content in Oct/Nov 2022.
Cost
£40 GBP Standard
£20 GBP Discounted – for poets who identify as Black and Ethnic Minority; Disabled; or Unemployed /Full-time student
If you’re an Indigenous poet it’s free. Get in touch before the places sell out.
Costs are kindly subsidised by The Emergence Foundation to enable wider participation.
Maximum 20 people
How do the workshops relate to the Climate of Change Poetry Challenge?
These workshops sit alongside the free Climate of Change Poetry Challenge. The Challenge seeks to create a positive community to help us all connect, think and write in fresh, deeper ways about the climate and environmental crisis. We know we need to re-envisage how we relate to, and impact our earth – and how we communicate to others too. And of course, poetry has power!
There will be similar writing exercises in the workshops as there will be in the Challenge, but more discussion and extra content. Join both if you wish! If you join the Challenge you also will have access to our private Facebook group community where we will be posting draft poems, commenting and encouraging each other. If you join the Challenge you also get assignments emailed to you in advance. It’s not essential to do them in advance as we will tackle them together online in the workshops, but it may help you research your pieces. For more about the Climate of Change Poetry Challenge and to join the mailing list for the Challenge CLICK HERE.
As Margaret Atwood says ‘I think calling it climate change is rather limiting. I would rather call it the everything change.’
Help us spread the word to build our community of change.
ABOUT THE FACILITATOR
Australian Cath Drake is based in London. She’s was an award-winning environmental journalist and writer in Australia for a decade with a post-graduate qualification in environmental science. Her poetry collection ‘The Shaking City’ (Seren Books) was highly commended in the 2020 Forward Prizes and longlisted in the international Laurel Prize for best collection of nature or environmental poetry. It was described by TS Eliot winner Philip Gross as ‘a guide to staying clear-eyed, combative and caring in unsettling times.’. It follows ‘Sleeping with Rivers’ which won the Seren/Mslexia poetry pamphlet prize and was a Poetry Book Society choice. Cath’s accolades include a second and commended in the Resurgence Poetry School international eco-poetry prize (now called Ginkgo) and short-listed for the Manchester Poetry Prize. Cath hosts The Verandah, online poetry teaching and events. She is also a mindfulness teacher.
The Verandah is proud to offer to bursaries to poets of colour from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen & Obsidian Foundation alumni
Contact me using this form TO BE ADDED TO THE WAITING LIST
