9.30am to 5pm

The course

In this course you will learn to write poetry that is alive to nature but is uniquely yours. Avoid common pitfalls, write with the senses and be inspired by the beautiful surroundings of the museum. The course will include tutor led seminars, writing workshops and writing exercises which will take us out and about.

The tutor

James Simpson has taught Creative Writing at universities and colleges for over fifteen years. He is a Jerwood/Arvon Award Winner and won second prize in the Thomas Hardy Society’s James Gibson Memorial Poetry Competition. He has collaborated with the artist and printmaker Carolyn Trant on the artist’s book, Hunting the Wren (Parvenu/Actaeon Press) which was purchased by the British Library, Special Collections. Recently they have worked together on The Untenanted Room (Agenda Editions). His work has appeared in Resurgence, Agenda, The London Magazine and The Hardy Society Journal and has been anthologised in Our Common Ground (Silverdart Publishing), a collection of poems celebrating farming and the countryside.

Jeremy Hooker has said of his work, ‘the poems are charged with feelings of awe or tenderness or anger. A poetic vision which combines subtle and sensitive apprehension with power. Reading you, I thought of Edward Thomas’s badger, ‘That most ancient Briton of English beasts’, and of elements in Ted Hughes… I thought of something in the land and in the language, in the Anglo-Saxon and earlier roots.’

Participant information

The course is limited to 10 participants.

Fee

£50 per person, to include tuition, materials, teas and coffees. The Museum café will be open or you can bring a packed lunch.

The Museum

The Weald & Downland Open Air Museum has over 45 historic building exhibits.  It is also home to the award winning and innovative Downland Gridshell, which houses a conservation workshop and artefact store, and is also used for many practical courses.  The Museum runs a full programme of courses in historic building conservation and traditional rural trades and crafts, along with MSc programmes in Building Conservation and Timber Building Conservation. Please telephone for further details.

To book, download a form here. Alternatively, fill in the booking request below.

Make a Booking Request

 
This is an initial booking request form, and does not guarantee a place on the course. The Adult Learning Team will check the availability of the course, and reply to you as soon as possible - usually within one working day.