This course is suitable for complete beginners as well as more experienced poets, offering exciting ways into writing poetry. Morning workshops begin with generative workshops: structured, scaffolded sessions which start with reading then open out into participants’ own writing.
For experienced poets, workshops will be like life-drawing lessons, developing approaches and techniques through the discipline of daily practice. For new writers, they will offer liberating opportunities to begin. Early evening workshop sessions will be spent editing, building confidence and skill in poetic craft. Each participant will have a 30 minute individual tutorial in the course of the week.
Throughout, we will listen closely to ourselves and to each other. By the final evening, everyone will have finished work they will be proud to read aloud.
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Tutor: Kate Clanchy– Poet Kate Clanchy directs the Sanctuary Arts programme at Mansfield College, Oxford, where she maintains flourishing writing groups with migrants and refugees in schools, colleges and, online, in Afghanistan. In addition, she edits and maintains a teaching practice on Substack. She is the author of How to Grow Your Own Poem, ‘The best book I’ve read about how to practise writing poetry.’ Hollie McNish. Kate Clanchy is one of the UK’s best-known teachers of poetry, ‘An out-of-body experience,’ wrote Lindsay Nicholson MBE after, following a lifetime of distinguished journalism, she read out her first poem in one of Kate’s workshops and the poet, Luke Wright has said, ‘Kate is an especially tactful, insightful and creative editor. I rely on her readings.’ Kate published her first collection of poems, Slattern, in 1996, and went on to win a Forward Prize, a Saltire Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. As a fiction writer, she has won the BBC Short Story Prize and the V. S. Pritchett Prize. In 2021, she won the Orwell Prize for her memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. Kate has had 15 radio plays produced on Radio 3 and Radio 4, most recently adaptations of My Antonia and Moon Tiger. Photo credit: Ander Macintyre |
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Thursday Evening Guest Reader: Emma Storr – poet Emma Storr lives in Yorkshire and her poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies and won prizes in local and national poetry competitions. Her debut pamphlet Heart Murmur, published in 2019, was based on her experience of working as a GP. Offcumdens (Fair Acre Press 2022) featured 41 of Emma’s poems paired with Bob Hamilton’s photographs of Yorkshire‘s people, streets and landscapes. Emma’s first solo collection came out in 2023 with Indigo Dreams Publishing, titled The Year of Two Winters. In 2026 Ings Press published her collection of humorous poems A Rare Opportunity to Purchase, illustrated by artist Janis Goodman. |
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| PRICES |
Fee includes all day and evening tutored workshop sessions, individual tutorials, tutor and guest readings, accommodation, inc. sheets and towels and all meals (not including alcohol). Single – En-suite room £1,205 |
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| TO BOOK |
£250 deposit payable on booking by bank transfer, PayPal, credit card or cheque, to secure place. Balance due six weeks before the start of the course. Please see Terms and Conditions. |
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| STRUCTURE OF THE WEEK | See Structure of the Week (tab above) | |||||
| WHAT TO BRING |
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| START TIME |
Please arrive between 3:00pm and 4:00pm on Monday 8th November 2027 Tea, cake and housekeeping information 4.30pm Introductory Workshop 5.30 – 6.30pm |
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| END TIME |
After breakfast, 10:00am on Saturday 13th November 2027 |
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| LOCATION | The Garsdale Retreat, Clough View, Garsdale Head, Sedbergh, Cumbria LA10 5PW Nearest railway station: Garsdale, on the Leeds – Carlisle line. For directions, see Find Us section on the Contact page. |
All courses start on Monday afternoon.
3.00 – 4.00pm: Arrival time
4.30pm: Housekeeping/Course information with tea and cake
5.30 – 6.30pm: Introductory workshop
7.00pm: Dinner
All courses end after breakfast on Saturday (10.00am).
Course Structure Tuesday – Friday
8.00 – 9.00am: Breakfast
9.30 – 11.00am: First workshop – Participants explore particular aspects of poetry and take part in writing exercises to further their understanding and expertise. All participants have opportunities to share their work with the tutor and fellow writers in a safe, supportive and nurturing environment in which individual work is respected and confidence developed.
11.00 – 11.30am: Coffee break
11.30am – 1.00pm: Second workshop
1.00pm Lunch.
After lunch, participants are free to do whatever they like, such as: relax, go for walks, read or work on individual writing projects.
4.30pm: Tea and cake
5.30 – 6.30pm: Third workshop
7.00pm: Dinner
All participants on a course have one individual tutorial of 30 minutes with the tutor in the course of the week. These will take place in the afternoons.
Each evening, at 8.30pm – c.9.30pm, there is an after-dinner event:
Tuesday – the tutor will read from their work.
Wednesday – reading from a guest writer.
Thursday – poetry/music performance from Hamish and Rebecca.
Friday – a shared reading of the ‘work-in-progress’ anthology produced during the week.
