Be inspired to write poems that celebrate, challenge and lament humanity’s relationship with the natural world; and, over the course of the weekend, develop your poems from inspiration to revision toward completion.
- When? Sat July 22, 10:30 – 5; Sun July 23, 10 – 4
- Where? The Glens Centre, Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim
- How much? €75 (with thanks to the Glens Centre for their generous support)
- Early-bird? €60, if booked and paid for before July 15.
- €60 PayPal – use this link to pay with a debit or credit card – no need for a PayPal account. If you’re having trouble with PayPal, email me at monicacorishwriting@gmail.com.
- Travelling a distance? The Organic Centre has a list of places to stay in North Leitim
What is Ecopoetry? Why write it?
Creativity is a powerful antidote to burnout – Angela Davis
Ecopoetry is nature poetry that has designs on us, that imagines changing the ways we think, feel about, and live and act in the world. Why Ecopoetry? John Shoptaw
Even when [the nature poem] got the birds and the plants and the animals right it tended to show the beautiful bird but not so often the bulldozer off to the side that was destroying the bird’s habitat. ‘Well Then There Now’, Juliana Spahr
Write about your everyday experience of what is changing in the world around you and the environmental issues you feel passionate about. Because while facts feel slippery and inaccessible and make us feel helpless, experiences can help us understand the world from our own perspective, and artists of all kinds can create experiences better than anyone else. What is Ecopoetry and why write it? Open University, Suzannah Evans
[Readers] feel they ‘know this information already, so why do they need it in a poem’. That is precisely the point. They ‘know’ it. They are not ‘feeling it’. That is what activists in the environmental movement are asking of us: help it be felt, help it be imagined. Jorie Graham, in conversation with Sharon Blackie
[Writing] is a model for how indirect effect can be, how delayed, how invisible; no one is more hopeful than a writer, no one is a bigger gambler. Rebecca Solnit
The future belongs to those who tell the best stories. Jorge Luis Borges
The Irish Writers Centre, the National Botanic Gardens, and Channel (a new environmentalist literary magazine) are hosting a Flash Fiction/Creative Non-Fiction competition. Entry date is March 11.
Monica Corish 