Steve Ely – Tutor
Tutor
Rebecca Watts – Guest Reader
Guest Reader
10th – 15th May 2027
Course Date

This tutored retreat is designed for writers to work intensively with a focus on individual sessions to help them develop their work. This will involve looking in detail at work in progress, as well as building on strengths and considering future directions.

There will be a 60 minute introductory workshop on Monday, after tea and there will be a 90 minute daily workshop, offering writing exercises and prompts to stimulate new ideas. Each writer will have a daily (Tuesday – Friday) individual 30 minute tutorial to offer tailored individual support.

Tutor: Steve Ely – Poet

Steve Ely is a poet and writer from the southern West Riding of Yorkshire.

He has published fourteen books or pamphlets of poetry since 2013, including the award-winning/nominated Oswald’s Book of Hours (2013), Incendium Amoris (2015,  The European Eel (2021) and Eely (2024).

His most recent publications are both collaborations: Orasaigh (2024), with the photographer Michael Faint; and White Pony (2026), with the artist Alan Parker. He has also published a novel, Ratmen, and a biographical work, Ted Hughes’s South Yorkshire: Made in Mexborough (2015).

Until recently he taught creative writing at the University of Hudderfield, where he was also director of the Ted Hughes Network, and he still teaches in a range of contexts – universities, schools, community writing groups, prisons, online, and in residential contexts including the Arvon Foundation and the Garsdale Retreat. In 2024 he devised and organised the Writing the Apocalyptic Landscape poetry short-course and the poetry competition of the same name, and edited Apocalyptic Landscape, the anthology that was the major fruit of that project.

Wednesday Evening Guest Reader: Rebecca Watts – poet

Rebecca Watts’s debut poetry collection The Met Office Advises Caution (Carcanet, 2016) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2017 Seamus Heaney Centre Prize, as well as being one of the Guardian and Financial Times’s ‘Best Books of 2016’. Her second collection Red Gloves (2020) won a Gladstone’s Library Writers-in-Residence Award in 2022. The Face in the Well (2025) is her latest collection. Rebecca currently lives in Cambridge, where she works in a library and as a freelance editor and tutor.
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
Single – Shared bathrooms £1,155
Shared Room (2 Beds, only for people who know each other) £1,105 pp – single supplement £50
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.
STRUCTURE OF THE WEEK See Structure of the Week (tab above)
WHAT TO BRING
Boots/outdoor shoes/trainers suitable for walking on rough/wet paths.
A waterproof jacket or coat, plus waterproof trousers if you like to walk in the rain!
Toiletries – we have one hair dryer available for use. Hand wash and shower gel are provided.
Writing materials: laptop and your personal writing preference – notebook, paper, pens etc.
Cash for tutors/guest readers/other participants’ books. The nearest cash machine is in Hawes, six miles away!
START TIME

Please arrive between 3:00pm and 4:00pm on Monday 10th May 2027

Tea, cake and housekeeping information 4.30pm

Introductory Workshop 5.30 – 6.30pm
Dinner 7.00pm
END TIME

After breakfast, 10:00am on Saturday 15th May 2027
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 Tutored Retreats start on Monday afternoon.

3.00 – 4.00pm Arrival time

4.30pm: Housekeeping/Tutored Retreat information with tea and cake

5.30 – 6.30pm:  Introductory workshop

7.00pm: Dinner

All tutored retreats end after breakfast on Saturday (10.00am).

Tutored Retreat Structure Tuesday – Friday

8.00 – 9.00am: Breakfast

9.30 – 11.00am: Group workshop – Participants explore particular aspects of poetry writing 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: 30 minute individual tutorials.

1.00pm Lunch

2.00pm – 4.30pm: 30 minute individual tutorials.

4.30pm: Tea and cake

5.00pm – 6.30pm: 30 minute individual tutorials.

7.00pm: Dinner

All participants on a tutored retreat have a 30 minute individual tutorial each day, Tuesday – Friday. A timetable will be prepared in conjunction with the tutor. Individual times will vary each day.

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 ‘work-in-progress’ produced during the week.

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