‘Poetry can be intensely emotional, and it can reveal truths in ways that avoid the discursive. It is perhaps the lyric, with its unique characteristics of brevity, musicality, concentration of thought and emotion in a formalised way, which best exemplifies a poem’s ability to reverberate and animate consciousness, to bring us into connection with the inner life.’

‘So much of writing happens entirely alone and entirely inside our own brains… it can be very easy to lose perspective. Collaboration and community are so important because of that: they keep me sane, and often stop me from despairing. I also find collaborative projects to be really energising and sparky, and that excitement almost always bleeds into the rest of my work too.’

‘This workshop is about giving yourself permission to slow down, think about what is going on somatically and how you interact with the world, and find ways to surprise yourself – to play, to rest, to think, to seek pleasure…that’s all part of poetry.’

‘So much of writing happens entirely alone and entirely inside our own brains … it can be very easy to lose perspective. Collaboration and community are so important because of that: they keep me sane, and often stop me from despairing.’

‘When we are in love our feelings seem as if they have been raised to the highest power, and we instinctively reach for a mode of expression to match the ardour of love’s dazzling, yet often cruel, grip and sting.’