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Poetry workshops with Virginia Astley

1 August - 24 August 2017

Poetry workshops with Virginia Astley

Tuesdays and Thursdays

1,3,15,17,22,24 August

10:30am – 1pm

Free of charge – but booking essential. Call Kestle Barton on 01326 231811

Award winning, Virgina Astley, musician, songwriter and poet, was our Artist in Residence at Kestle Barton in 2010. She is interested in putting the spoken word and music together and in using the natural world as inspiration and a means of reflection. Virginia returns this summer to offer a series of writing workshops that foster creative expression, as well as celebrating the natural beauty of the Helford River area:

This year’s series of creative writing workshops at Kestle will focus on exploring landscapes and looking at the relationships we build with our ‘own patch’; at what we embed in a particular place and what that place embeds in us. Early sessions will focus on gathering, on doing the research. We’ll be talking with people who know the local area intimately and reading examples of work with a strong sense of place. Using notebooks (or our phones!) we’ll be honing in and making close observations of what fascinates us.

Looking at short-forms of writing, for example: nature and travel-writing, journals and memoir, poetry, we’ll shape our findings.

For participants that are able to come to all sessions we will be aiming for some form of individual short collection: be that a poetry sequence, a collection of nature notes, a travel journal. For others who want to drop-in, they will find a stimulating and welcoming space.

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Virginia Astley

Virginia Astley, musician, songwriter and poet, lives in the Frome Valley where she writes and draws inspiration. She is interested in putting music and the spoken word together and working in immersive ways. Her recording Maiden Newton Ecliptic documents a twenty-four hour walk around this west Dorset village. Her poetry chapbook The Curative Harp was published by Southword Editions in 2015 and her first full length collection The English River: a journey down the Thames in poems and photographs will be published by Bloodaxe in June 2018. She was Highly Commended in the Bridport Prize, winning their Dorset prize; was awarded the Sonnet Prize in the Poetry on the Lake Competition, and last year came first in the South Bank Competition with her poem Lost in Locks. She will be writer-in-residence at Thomas Hardy’s cottage during September and October.

Open Tuesday - Sunday 10:30am - 5pm. Closed Mondays but open for Bank Holidays