A free workshop with Fran Lock and Simon Coltman
Fran Lock, Simon Coltman and Melanie Jones are back together and repeating their fabulous poetry and meditation workshop. This free workshop will give a huge insight into the writing process and the skills learnt will be applicable to prose as well as to poetry.
Exploring ways to improve focus, access new images and ideas, and turn those ideas into poetry, this afternoon will provide you with the tools you need to use meditation and free writing in your own poetic pursuits. Writing and editing poems will also be of great use to prose writers due to the focus on the lyric nature of language.
The workshop will begin with a mindfulness meditation session and will involve shorter and more focused mediation throughout the afternoon. There will be a series of exercises aimed at generating, structuring and editing poems. Editing meditations will provide the opportunity to view your writing as a reader would.
The afternoon will culminate in a feedback session facilitated by Fran and Melanie. All participants will be offered the opportunity for more detailed feedback via email after the session. Work produced may also be considered for publication on our website or performance at one of our live events.
Participants should bring pens and paper and wear clothes that are not too restrictive.
We sometimes take photos at our events and post these on social media. However, if you would prefer not to have your photograph taken, please send us a message at mirlearningbbk@gmail.com
Fran Lock is a dog whisperer and author of three poetry collections, Flatrock (Little Episodes, 2011), The Mystic and the Pig Thief (Salt, 2014), and Dogtooth (Out-Spoken Press, 2017). She is currently undertaking a practice-based Ph.D at Birkbeck on the relationship between the epistolary form in contemporary poetry and the use of letters in therapeutic contexts.
Simon Coltman is a singer-songwriter with an MA in philosophy from Birkbeck University. He has been practising mindful meditation since 2012. Simon writes both prose and poetry and is interested in the musicality of language. He also teaches philosophy to children.
Melanie Jones is a MIROnline Managing Editor and a PhD student at Birkbeck, where she researches the links between anxiety and creativity. Melanie was long-listed for the 2018 Bristol Prize and shortlisted for Poetic Republic’s Short Fiction Competition. Her work can be found in the following anthologies: Kissing Him Goodbye and Other Stories, and The Mechanics’ Institute Review issues 11 and 13. Melanie is currently working on a collection of semi-true short stories.
Tickets are free but limited. Sign up now to secure your place!
Photo by David Brooke Martin on Unsplash