Category: Writing Workshops
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Creative writing exercises for gardeners – we’re on again!
I started doing prompts for creative writing particularly designed for gardeners a little while ago but then life took over. Hmm. However, so many of you said they were useful that I’m starting again. Do feel free to share this post, to leave your work in the comments or generally use this resource as you…
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Creative Writing Wednesday – week 5. The smellograph…
this is a smellograph, the delicacy of rose surrendering to rain I went out into my garden this morning just after it had finished raining and the smells were delicious. It made me wish I could capture them in the same way I could snap, for example, the photograph this rose above with the raindrops…
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Creative writing exercise, week 4 – writing your own instructions
The late great Toni Morrison famously said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I like this advice on many levels, but mainly because it deals with the idea that when we are writing, we are also listening to ourselves. Perhaps one…
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Creative Writing exercise, week 3 – listening for inspiration
Shhh… what do you hear? A simple writing prompt for you today – just sit out in the garden (enjoying some sunshine hopefully) and make a list of everything you can hear around you. Write down everything from the van backing in the next road to the grass in the wind. Maybe you’re lucky enough…
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Week 1 of Writing in the Garden – a free creative writing exercise
Hello! I had such a lovely response to my recent article in the RHS Garden magazine on reading and writing poetry that I’ve decided to put a different creative writing exercise up on this website EVERY WEDNESDAY. We’ll see how we get on, but I suspect we will make some poetry and prose creative fire between…
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Why gardeners should read (and write) poetry
It was Cicero who said that if you have a garden and a library you want for nothing, and I’m proud to have an essay in the RHS The Garden magazine about why gardeners should read poetry. It was a joy to share lines of some of my favourite poems in the essay, and if…
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We wrote a poem on a leaf…
I’m just back from a glorious weekend teaching creative writing with Anna Robertshaw from Freestyle Yoga Project, who was teaching the yoga. Yoga and writing proved a perfect combination, or maybe that was the group who came. Or even the venue, glorious Tilton House, just up the road from the Bloomsbury set’s famous Charleston Farmhouse on…
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On a day so beautiful even the trees danced…
We had a picnic lunch on a log under this tree today, and I looked up to see the branches swaying in the wind, just as if they were dancing, lifting up their skirts like teasing can-can dancers, so lightly I could almost hear them laughing. And then when we got home, I realised I…
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Come and write with me…
Come and indulge your senses with a Herbal Infused Poetry Workshop at the beautiful Physic Garden at Westgate Gardens, Canterbury Saturday 24th September – 11-1pm Costs £4 (including tea and cake) How could such sweet and wholesome hours be reckoned, but in herbs and flowers? Andrew Marvell I’m running a workshop in Canterbury designed around…