Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon 22nd Apr - Sat 27th Apr, 2024
All Day
Location
Moniack Mhor, Kiltarlity, Inverness-shire , IV4 7HT
Allow the Blank Page to Yield New Words
‘What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire’ – Stanley Kunitz
How do we finally write the poems we’ve been dying to write? The poems that are trapped inside us, still waiting for the all clear? This course is all about radical self-permission, flinging open the doors of ourselves, allowing our blank pages to yield words we didn’t even know we held inside our heads. Prepare to write an almost criminal amount of new poems.
Tutors
Caroline Bird is a poet and playwright. Her sixth collection, The Air Year, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020 and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Costa Prize. Her fifth collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001 and the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010. She was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics. As a playwright, Bird has been shortlisted for the George Devine Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her Selected Poems, Rookie, was published in May 2022.
Malika Booker lectures at Manchester Metropolitan University, and co-founded Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (A writer’s collective). Her pamphlet Breadfruit, received a Poetry Society recommendation and her collection Pepper Seed was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize. She is published with the Poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3 (2017). A Cave Canem Fellow, inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company, awarded the Cholmondeley Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to poetry and elected a Royal Society of Literature Fellow (2022). She is the first woman to win the Forward Prize for Best Single poem twice: The Little Miracles (2020) and Libation (2023)
Guest Reader
Keith Jarrett is a writer, poet, performer and educator based in London. He is a UK Poetry Slam Champion and FLUPP International Poetry Slam Winner. His poem, ‘From the Log Book’, was projected onto the façade of St. Paul’s Cathedral and broadcast as a commemorative art installation, Where Light Falls, in 2019. His play, Safest Spot in Town, was performed at the Old Vic and aired on BBC Four. Selah, his debut poetry collection, was published in 2017 by Burning Eye Books.
Keith was selected as one of Val McDermid’s ten outstanding LGBTQI+ writers in the UK for the International Literary Showcase. He has judged the Polari Prize, the Foyle Young Poets Award, and is the Europe and Canada regional judge for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2021. Having recently completed his PhD at Birkbeck University, he is finishing his first novel and teaches on the Creative Writing MA.
Fees
The full fee for this course is £725. This includes your accommodation in a single room with shared bathroom, all meals, hot drinks and snacks from Monday afternoon until Saturday morning, and your tuition. For more information about the practicalities of our courses and retreats, please visit our About the Courses page.
A limited number of en-suite rooms are available, which can be booked in advance for a £50 surcharge. We will also reserve an en-suite room for anyone who may need it due to a medical condition. This will be offered out as an upgrade nearer the course start date if it is not needed.
A limited number of Twin Room places are available at a discounted price of £675 per person. When booking a Twin Room place, please tell us in the comments box which gender you are and which gender(s) you are comfortable sharing a room with. This information will remain confidential.
A deposit is required to secure your place, which is non-refundable after a 14-day cooling-off period. The balance payment of £575 is due six weeks before the course begins. Refunds are not always available – please read our Terms & Conditions for full details about our cancellation policy. If you would like to pay the full amount in advance, please call our booking office on 01463 592 828 or email info@moniackmhor.org.uk.
Bursaries are always available, and you also have the option to pay in instalments. If you have any problems paying online, or wish to discuss paying in instalments or applying for financial help, or would simply like assistance, please contact us by emailing info@moniackmhor.org.uk or phoning us on 01463 592828.
Access
Please let us know in your booking form if you have any access requirements, for example a ground floor bedroom and / or access to a step-free accessible shower room. We also reserve one en-suite bedroom per course for anyone who may need this due to a medical condition. For more information about access to our courses, please visit our Access page.
Terms and Conditions
Please read our Terms & Conditions before booking.
Bookings
This event is fully booked. Please email info@moniackmhor.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.