Calendar

Aimed at writers at all stages in their careers who are keen to put some spice back into their writing and live a healthy, sustainable life as a poet. We'll use workshops, discussions, examples and ladlefuls of useful tips to guide you through a sequence of dos and donts that will help revitalise your writing and enrich your poems with a longer shelf life.

Join Boo Hewerdine to examine the reasons why a song may or may not work. Boo will take both a well-known song and one of his own songs and look at lyrics, melody, chord progressions and the editing process.

Join award-winning novelist Liz Hyder online for a month to explore the joyful art of harnessing your imagination to build fictional worlds.

Summer is upon us, and Moniack's gardens and the fields around us are bursting with life.  Bring this rich energy to your writing practice with dedicated writing time on this first of two August retreat weeks.

In this second of two August retreat weeks, keep your writing flowing in the long summer days. Write by an evening fire in our stone circle, or in the cool shade of the stone walled living room surrounded by flowers cut from the gardens, and nourish your self and your words.

In this masterclass, Boo Hewerdine will critique a selection of your pre-submitted songs to examine what makes a song studio ready.

The aim of this course is to explore nature and wildlife, as well as the way we use language and the ethics of writing about a world we have so diminished. Central to the week is understanding how direct observation and internalising experience can be processed into high-quality poetry or prose.