Invitation to our second Walking on Wyre creative writing workshop with Sarah Hymas.

Join Sarah Hymas for the second of our Walking on Wyre creative writing workshops on Sunday 18th May at The Wyre Estuary Countryside Park, River Rd, Thornton-Cleveleys FY5 5LR.  All our workshops are free to attend and walking with the group is intended to inspire but the walking part is optional, so if you want to sit it out there are research materials to look at. 

We will meet at The Riverside Room at 10:20,  ready to link with a Wyre guide on a circular walk around the park, river bank and drumlin hill, returning to the study room for refreshments and on with the creative workshop. 

There will be a short break for lunch at the cafe where the walls are filled with local information or if the weather is good, bring a picnic and make the most of the great outdoors.  The pathway can be a mixed blessing, sometimes muddy so please wear boot or wellies and bring a pair that are comfortable for the remainder of the day.

Muddy gullies at Skipool Creek 

Notes Towards a Poem

I view writing workshops not so much as places to produce writing as a time for making notes. They are an opportunity to share our thinking and writing practices, be stimulated by existing poems and have focused time for writing – the combination of time pressure and thematic parameters can pull the strangest, most interesting of work from us. Everything that is written on the day – notes, doodles or actual pieces that resemble drafts can be reconsidered afterwards, worked up, stripped down, turned inside out.

The workshop on Sunday 18 May will be such a day. We’ll be led on a walk in Wyre by a Coastal Ranger for the first hour, providing a chance for observation, day dreaming and knowledge sharing about the Wyre. To smooth the step from outdoor time to the indoor section of the day, we’ll share our experiences, deepen our initial thinking and add new ideas, make new connections.

A workshop, with all its participants, is a cauldron for a variety of contributions. And it’s this dynamic I’m keen to make the most of. I hope there’ll be people attending who know tons more about the local wildlife and history than I do, who are willing to share this knowledge to inform everyone’s writing. People who will bring poems they love about rivers. And people who have an insatiable curiosity. All welcome!

I’ll be the one with the writing games and prompts to get everyone writing something. We’ll try a variety of techniques through which I can share my practice: how I go about writing and what I might do to develop pieces. Here is a recent example of some thinking about another river - http://sarahhymas.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/fourfold-space-and-creativity.html . I’ll have a clutch of ways in and around writing about the area, and will be interested to hear how people respond to these ideas.

If you get the chance to attend more than one workshop in this series hosted by Dead Good Poets you’ll be exposed to a broad scope of writing techniques and styles, and maybe you’ll even write up something you’re proud of. Hope to see you on the 18^th.

Sarah

Here are some more of Barry McCann's fabulous photographs to inspire you all. 


Enquiries:  walkingwyre@gmail.com