Environmental Poet of the Year: Workshop with Jane Burn
About
Join Jane Burn, the current Environmental Poet of the Year, for an inspirational writing workshop at Wordsworth Grasmere.
Write and share new poems, and gather ideas to enter next year’s prize, in this workshop with titleholder Jane Burn. Or come along because you love poetry, or wonder how Jane researched and wrote about whales so effectively for her winning pamphlet.
Jane will discuss the tools she used when writing her winning poems from A Thousand Miles from the Sea. She will give insights into how she connects with place in many different ways, be it through dreams or research. ‘Regardless of circumstances, I think we can make the connections, anytime, anywhere any place. It’s about removing the barriers we place on ourselves and also which the world places upon us. This is what can fire inspiration’.
With free entry to Jane’s evening event also included, you can join in with a later Q&A about the prize and the climate crisis.
All you need to bring with you is a notebook and pen. Tea, coffee, and light refreshments will be provided.
About Jane Burn
Jane Burn is an award-winning poet, artist, and hybrid writer. She is a working-class, pansexual person with autism and has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University, where she won the 2022 academic prize for best overall performance. In 2022, Jane explored her neurodivergent writer’s theories funded by Arts Council England and is currently putting these ideas into a book. In 2023 she was awarded a grant by the Royal Literary Fund to continue her writing. Her poems are widely published and anthologised. Her collection, Be Feared, is available from Nine Arches Press, and her forthcoming collection, The Apothecary of Flight is due out in 2024, also from Nine Arches Press. Passionate about nature and the environment, she lives off-grid with her family in a painstakingly restored 1920s wooden cottage in Northumberland for most of the year. Jane is hoping to find the right establishment in which to pursue a creative writing PhD.
About A Thousand Miles from the Sea
A Thousand Miles from the Sea examines every aspect of whaling, from the human perspective and in the voice of the whale. It is a rare and remarkable collection of poems which shows a great capacity for empathy and an impressive command of form. It is a wholly original pamphlet, packed with brilliant images, visceral and raw, tender and heartfelt. Weather doesn’t just act upon land, it ‘gobbles colour from the walls’. A whale is ‘the colour of ages’. This poetry haunted each of us, even bringing us to tears. It has the impact that this prize is all about.
The poems carry a message not only of our destructive human behaviours but also of hope. We can change. A Thousand Miles from the Sea is remarkable, beautiful, and we can only urge you to read it
— Judges
Location
Learning Space
Wordsworth Grasmere, Grasmere, Lake District LA22 9SH
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