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Nature Feels: a queer writing retreat (SOLD OUT)
September 2 - September 7
£775
Nature Feels: a queer writing retreat by declan wiffen
If queer people have historically been pitted ‘against’ nature because of their unnatural desires, then we might ask ‘what do queers want with the natural?’ Is there something queer about nature? And what kind of feeling, relations and alliances might queers have with ecology? We’ll explore these questions through attempting to embrace the artificial; negotiate our ambivalences; foster alternative kinships; & probe intimacy with the non-human.
Nature Feels invites you to challenge, and pervert, traditional modes of nature writing and will offer experiments and prompts to support your own writing projects on natural, environmental and ecological subjects. We’ll also look at essays, fiction, memoir and poetry from writers such as Derek Jarman, Alys Fowler, Sabrina Imbreler, Tommy Pico, Noreen Masud, Maria Sledmere, Shani Mootoo and others. Morning activities will be inside and outside, with opportunities in the afternoons to spend your time writing, hiking or sea swimming. We’ll also take part in a foraging walk and supper, led by Mark Williams from Galloway Wild Foods on Thursday evening.
All writing activities will be suitable for any level and any genre you’re working in, be it a novel, a sequence of poetry, autobiography, or something that doesn’t sit comfortably within these forms. declan wiffen is lecturer in Contemporary Literature at The University of Kent as well as Tutor for Beyond Form Creative Writing, where he teaches courses on queer ecologies, most recently Gay Gardens. His pamphlet indiscriminate lanking was published in July 2022 by Invisible Hand Press and the video-zine Endless Chat // #2 [draft] can be found at Permeable Barrier. He was invited to write ‘An Afterword, if you like’ to accompany the publication of Derek Jarman’s only work of short fiction, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping, an excerpt of which was published by Granta. Other recent writing can be found at SPAM Zine, FieldNotes 003 and Strings
September 2nd-7th 2024
£775 (5% discount for anyone booking two courses/retreats in any 12-month period)