Virginia Astley will be hosting a series of special poetry workshops taking place this summer at Kestle Barton Art Gallery, Cornwall.
Virgina was Artist-in-Residence at Kestle Barton in 2010. She is interested in putting the spoken word and music together and in using the natural world as inspiration and a means of reflection. Virginia returns this summer to offer a series of writing workshops that foster creative expression, as well as celebrating the natural beauty of the Helford River area.
This year’s series of creative writing workshops at Kestle will focus on exploring landscapes and looking at the relationships we build with our ‘own patch’; at what we embed in a particular place and what that place embeds in us. Early sessions will focus on gathering, on doing the research. We’ll be talking with people who know the local area intimately and reading examples of work with a strong sense of place. Using notebooks (or our phones!) we’ll be honing in and making close observations of what fascinates us.
Looking at short-forms of writing, for example: nature and travel-writing, journals and memoir, poetry, we’ll shape our findings.
For participants that are able to come to all sessions we will be aiming for some form of individual short collection: be that a poetry sequence, a collection of nature notes, a travel journal. For others who want to drop-in, they will find a stimulating and welcoming space.
The workshops will take place Kestle Barton Art Gallery, Cornwall on 1st, 3rd, 15th, 17th, 22nd, 24th August. The workshops are free, but booking essential. Please see our Events Page for more details.