Workshops & Events
Becca has worked on multiple critical-creative projects in the role of practitioner and organiser, including Water Poetics and Word Craft at the University of York, De-Composition / Re-Composition, and Revoicing Medieval Poetry (York: KCL: UCL).
Writing the Museum: Poetry and Artefacts
Come and join me in this 8 week poetry course at the University of York's Centre for Lifelong Learning!
https://www.york.ac.uk/lifelonglearning/dates/202324/non-accreditedcourses/creativewriting/spring/writingthemuseum/
https://www.york.ac.uk/lifelonglearning/dates/202324/non-accreditedcourses/creativewriting/spring/writingthemuseum/
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Writing the Museum: Poetry and Artefacts
Thursdays, 7 – 9 pm, beginning 25th January 2024
In this course you are invited to creatively visit the Museum. Each week we will explore collections from Britain’s most famous museums and hidden gems, finding artefacts to inspire our own poetry. We will also learn from the work of other poets who have ‘written’ the museum, including John Keats, W.H. Auden, Kathleen Jamie, JR Carpenter, and Penny Boxall. By the end of this course you will have begun a poetry collection of your own. This course is suitable for writers of all abilities – beginners are very welcome!
Dr Becca Drake is a poet and researcher at the University of York. She/they completed a PhD in medieval English and Icelandic literature in 2023. Her/their work focuses on East Coast histories and literature, maritime environments, and the place of the human in the natural world. Becca was poet-in-residence at the Hull Maritime Museum (2021). Her/their chapbook The Maritime Museum & The City (2023) is published with Thin Ice Press. Her latest pamphlet Unstill Landscapes is forthcoming with the award-winning Guillemot Press.
To register, please contact the Centre for Lifelong Learning: +44 (0)1904 328473 / [email protected]
Writing the Museum: Poetry and Artefacts
Thursdays, 7 – 9 pm, beginning 25th January 2024
In this course you are invited to creatively visit the Museum. Each week we will explore collections from Britain’s most famous museums and hidden gems, finding artefacts to inspire our own poetry. We will also learn from the work of other poets who have ‘written’ the museum, including John Keats, W.H. Auden, Kathleen Jamie, JR Carpenter, and Penny Boxall. By the end of this course you will have begun a poetry collection of your own. This course is suitable for writers of all abilities – beginners are very welcome!
Dr Becca Drake is a poet and researcher at the University of York. She/they completed a PhD in medieval English and Icelandic literature in 2023. Her/their work focuses on East Coast histories and literature, maritime environments, and the place of the human in the natural world. Becca was poet-in-residence at the Hull Maritime Museum (2021). Her/their chapbook The Maritime Museum & The City (2023) is published with Thin Ice Press. Her latest pamphlet Unstill Landscapes is forthcoming with the award-winning Guillemot Press.
To register, please contact the Centre for Lifelong Learning: +44 (0)1904 328473 / [email protected]
Water Poetics (with Writers at York)
A series of poetry readings by exciting new voices in contemporary poetics and landscape writing, accompanied by local creative writing poetry workshops, Water Poetics seeks to engender fresh understandings with the watery landscapes and environments of Yorkshire and its east coast. This project is supported by the Writers at York programme in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, as well as by a HRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of York.
Water Poetics I: Suzannah V. Evans, Rowan Evans, and Chris Evans
Water Poetics II: in Conversation with Alycia Pirmohamed
Dr Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. She is the author of Another Way to Split Water, as well as the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind, and the collaborative essay Second Memory, which was co-authored with Pratyusha. Her latest book is an edited collection of nature writing by women and nonbinary writers of colour titled Our Time is a Garden.
Join us for a one-off Q&A with Alycia in which we think about ‘What … it means to belong somewhere or to something’, ‘the consequences of being decentred, perceived as unfamiliar or as a stranger to place’, and the slippages between ecopoetry and nature writing.
Free event / no booking required / 5pm – 7pm / 22/02/2024 / P/L/002 (University of York campus)
Join us for a one-off Q&A with Alycia in which we think about ‘What … it means to belong somewhere or to something’, ‘the consequences of being decentred, perceived as unfamiliar or as a stranger to place’, and the slippages between ecopoetry and nature writing.
Free event / no booking required / 5pm – 7pm / 22/02/2024 / P/L/002 (University of York campus)
Voicing the Beck: Water Poetics X St Nick's Nature Reserve
Read more about the 'Voicing the Beck' workshop here.
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[flyer] 'Voicing the Beck', 27th November 2023: Water Poetics X St Nicks Nature Reserve A free creative writing workshop at St Nicks nature reserve for adults and young people in the city of York. In the workshop we will head out into the nature reserve to explore the sounds, history, and poetry of the local becks. Responding to the rich biodiversity of these historic waters and the history of their conservation, participants will be encouraged to produce their own creative responses through poetry to the wildlife and watery environments of St Nicks. Workshop attendees will also explore questions such as "how do we co-exist with envrionemnts prone to change through flood and drought?" and "what is our place in the urban environments of the city alongside its wildlife?" No previous experience of creative writing is necessary. The workshop is aimed at beginners and is physically accessible along concrete paths throughout the nature reserve. If you are interested in learning more about your local wildlife environment and about how you can get involved with maintaing it, then this workshop is for you! Refreshments will be provided and all participants will receive £5.80 to cover the cost of a Yorkshire Day Saver bus ticket to and from the workshop venue. The workshop will be facilitated by staff at St Nicks nature reserve and staff from the University of York, including Writer-in-residence and poet Anthony Vahni Caplideo, and researcher and poet Becca Drake. |
Other Workshops |
Word Craft
With Fran Brooks, and Anthony Vahni Capildeo. An account of the workshop, written by University of York student Ellen Waters, can be read here.
De-Composition / Re-Composition
With Fran Brooks, Catherine Evans, and Hannah Armstrong. Roundtable discussion of critical-creative approaches to mud and estuary landscapes. First presented at the bi-annual ASLE-UKI conference (2022), this roundtable was specially reconvened for the IHR in 2023.
Revoicing Medieval Poetry
With Fran Brooks, Carl Kears, Fran Allfrey, and Anthony Vahni Capildeo.