Event Details

Afternoon writing workshop at The Castle Suite, Lancaster with award-winning poet Jane Burn, followed by an evening reading at The Storey.

'Unlocking Nature: Writing’s Potential for Giving Back.'

I’d rather give back the leaves to the trees, the waves to the sea”, wrote Etel Adnan, in Shifting the Silence. “I want to go the places that my dreams open up”.

We will use our words to connect us to nature, to root and resonate us into place. Nature is crucial to everyone. Using a variety of source material and exercises, we will explore how it manifests its importance to us, and developour voices within the themes of it. Any aspect of creative writing or hybridity is welcome.

The afternoon workshop is preceded by a free lunch at the Castle Suite, with an opportunity for informal conversation. There will be an evening reading by Jane at the Storey, during which participants are invited to read from work generated in the workshop.

Bio

Jane Burn is an award-winning, working class, pansexual, autistic person, parent, poet, artist, and essayist. Her essays have appeared on New Defences of Poetry, Newcastle University, 2021, The Friday Poem, 2021/22, Un/Natural Showcase, 2021, for D/deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent nature writers with the Royal Society of Literature’s Literature Matters programme, the Rebecca Swift Foundation, 2022, Poetry Wales and Alchemy Spoon).

In 2021, Jane documented her neurodivergent/hybrid writing methodologies, funded by Arts Council England. She is author of non-traditional scholarly papers—one of which she has presented the Conference, Hybridity, at Newcastle University, 2022, and one which is published by Persona Studies Journal, 2022.

Her poems are widely published in magzines such as The Rialto, Under The Radar and Butcher’s Dog, and anthologised by presses including Seren, Emma Press and Pan Macmillan. She has collections published with Indigo Dreams, Wyrd Harvest, KFS Press and Culture Matters. Her latest collection, Be Feared, is available from Nine Arches.

Jane has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University/The Poetry School.

Timings

1-2pm, lunch at the Castle Suite

2-4.30pm - writing workshop

5.30 - 6.45 - Evening Reading by course participants (voluntary - not required) and reading by Jane Burn