Nature Writing Workshop

"What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?"
E.M. Forster

Floods, fires, scorched earth - our beautiful, fragile planet is in ever greater peril. This new nature-focused course will invite students to meditate on nature, their experiences within it and their responses to it.

Students are invited to write in any form they wish - fiction, memoir, poetry, creative nonfiction, essay - or an experimental mix! We'll be exploring the beauty and wonder of nature and natural forms, the joy of interactions with non-human species and the defining issue of our age - the climate and biodiversity crisis. We'll read and discuss published extracts of nature and climate writing, and we’ll share and workshop our work with the group for supportive feedback and friendly debate.

There has been an explosion of nature writing in the last decade. We’ll be reading extracts from a diverse group of nature writers which will include a selection from the likes of Roger Deakin (‘Waterlog’, a nature writing classic), Anita Sethi (‘I belong Here’, memoir), Jini Reddy (‘Wanderland’, pastoral travelogue), Elizabeth Jane-Burnett (‘The Grassling’, poetry), Peter Wohlleban (‘The Hidden Life of Trees’, non-fiction), Luke Turner (‘Out of the Woods’, memoir), Robert Macfarlane (‘The Wild Places’, a non-fiction search for remaining pockets of wildness in the UK), and Helen Macdonald (‘H is for Hawk’, memoir).

Week 1: Our real-life interactions with non-human species.
Week 2: Water – swimming, exploring, in pond, river or sea.
Week 3: Trees – what they mean to us. Identify a favourite tree.
Week 4: The climate and nature crisis. How might we respond in writing?
Week 5: Nature, land, who owns it? Belonging, trespassing, reclaiming.
Week 6: Sharing final pieces of our writing and our insights.

All levels of writer welcome.

Our tutor Giovanna says...

My love of nature as well as a deepening anxiety about the climate crisis has increasingly crept into my writing - so I had a personal reason for wanting to offer this course. I wondered how other writers are processing the vast existential threat of climate crisis, and how we might together go about exploring our responses in writing. We all have memories of being in the natural world and have love for particular places: lone beaches, small pockets of forest, a secret swimming pool or even a favourite city tree. Max Porter says, ‘If you are not terrified about the future, you are not paying attention...’ which sounds pretty bleak, but fear can strangely be quite galvanising and I think he means 'Wake up, look around you and do something!' Writing can be the start of that journey.

BRAND NEW COURSE!

Student testimonials coming in April!