You are invited to bring a poem or short piece of creative prose to read. We will discuss each offering and Bridget will share word-crafting techniques.
Enjoy a meditation on the nature of words. It is followed by a word-crafting and word-sharing session. Sorry, but this event is no longer taking bookings!
Enjoy a meditation on the nature of words. It is followed by a word-crafting and word-sharing session. Sorry, but This event is no longer taking bookings!
Liberate Your Writing Workshop at Penzance Literary Festival
In this month’s online group: writing techniques, readings of inspiring poetry and short prose, a writing ‘experiment’ (prompt) to undertake and time for sharing work.
In this regular monthly online group, Bridget offers a fusion of the sacred/spiritual, psychological/therapeutic and nature-based creative writing theory, skills and practice. Readings of inspirational poetry and short prose.
In this regular monthly online group, Bridget offers a fusion of the sacred/spiritual, psychological/therapeutic and nature-based creative writing theory and practice. Readings of inspirational poetry and short prose.
As we approach Valentine’s Day you’ll be guided to craft a love poem that acts as a portal and expression of True Nature. ❤️
As we approach Valentine’s Day you’ll be guided to craft a love poem that speaks of an aspect of connection to nature. ❤️
A workshop using words to explore, express and deepen our relationship with Being. And readings of inspirational poetry
Sunday 12th June 2022
10am- 5pm
Studio 34 - Integrative Arts Psychotherapy space
Bickerton House, Bickerton Road
Archway, London. N19 5JT
Cost: £80. A limited number of concessionary places are available.
Please contact hello@wildwords.org to book your place, or for further information.
Using a process known as ‘found verse’ Bridget will facilitate a safe group space in which, using verbatim words as a basis, you’ll transform experiences – from joyful to traumatic – into spoken and written poems.
In the process, we’ll share experiences, track down our authentic voice and discover the stories we truly need to tell. You’ll come away with both individually and collaboratively crafted work.
To support this process there will be readings of inspirational poems and art, montage and body awareness exercises.
Bridget will address subjects including sensory impressions, body sensations, emotion, point of view, the narrative arc, rhythm, tension, voice, character and dialogue, form, working with personal and/or traumatic material, and the role of storytelling in enabling human beings to survive and thrive.
We’ll explore the (often unconscious) structures and techniques that, when we sit down to write, creates the idea of ‘block’, as well as gain an equal understanding of how to arrive at ‘flow’.
By the end of the workshop you’ll have used the smallest signs to covey the most vast, transformed the unspeakable into words, and laughed a great deal with like-minded souls.
Some parts of the day will take place in the nearby park or heath. Please bring coldproof, waterproof clothing, writing materials (laptops welcome but please also bring hand writing materials) and lunch. Tea/coffee and cake will be provided. No previous familiarity (or confidence) with words is required! Suitable for your own creative/therapeutic exploration as well as for therapists/teachers wishing to develop skills for client, student and patients groups.
‘The One True Word Project’ and the process known as ‘found verse’ was developed by psychotherapist, writer and founder of Wild Words Bridget Holding in response to distressing world situations. It offers safe group spaces, word-crafting skills and a public platform to enable the processing of emotion and the communicating of experience through words. The project publishes poetry and short prose online. Work is also read aloud on the ground where it has been written, and sent in letter form to interested parties.
The day will focus on transforming personal experience into poetry, and will include many examples of the inspiring words of others. We'll use 'found verse' as a gateway into learning techniques and exploring block and flow in writing. All skills are transferable into other genres of writing.
Bring your own drinks, snacks and lunch. Some parts of the day will take place outdoors, so come with cold-proof, waterproof clothing. Also bring writing materials – laptops are welcome but please also bring hand writing materials.
No previous familiarity (or confidence) with words is required! The day is suitable for your own creative/therapeutic exploration as well as for therapists/teachers wishing to develop skills for client, student and patients groups.
If you need accomodation for the night(s) before or after the workshop, let us know, and we can arrange that for you. And if you’d like any individual tuition while you’re here, Bridget would be happy to talk about that.
Unleash the passion, power and vitality in your spoken, sung and written words. Find the story you need to tell. Go from beginning to end on your project.
For those who work in environmental organisations, and/or would like to access creativity and health.
We will be both playful and serious, using body-based work, arts, writing and nature, to explore our relationship to the inner and outer ‘wilds’. Re-wilding ourselves, for our own survival and thriving, and that of the planet.
A workshop for those who love to craft words. Bring passion, power and aliveness into your fiction and non-fiction writing.
A day of nature-based, psychological, and body-based exploration around self-expression, creativity, and freedom.
The writing process can sometimes feel overwhelming. In this course, through the writing of a short story or narrative poem, you’ll learn a system for chunking down any project into bite-size, do-able pieces.
You’ll choose your idea and start writing. You’ll be supported to negotiate moments of stuckness and block, to complete the first draft. Moving into the second draft we will consciously apply specific tools to bring passion and power into your story. These will include: emotion, sensory impressions, narrative structure, and dialogue. You’ll come away with a beautiful product, of publishable quality. You’ll feel satisfied and invigorated by the process.
Outline of the week:
Day 1: The natural storyteller. The5 key elements. The 3-act structure.
Day 2: Point of View. Setting up thewriting environment. From start to finish. How to write a first draft.Openings.
Day 3: The second draft stage.Sensory impressions. Body Sensations.
Day 4: Emotion. Power and passion.Hooking your reader/listener and keeping them.
Day 5: Movement and Rhythm. Endings.Readings.
Exercises in all keystorytelling/writing techniques, is underpinned by creative writing andpsychological theory.
This course is suitable for fledgling and experienced writers, and writers of all types of fiction and non-fiction. Please arrive at the first session with three ideas, each of 25 words or less, that could form the basis for a short story or narrative poem of up to 2000 words.
Booking via Uppingham Summer School
A step-by-step guide to surviving and thriving as a writer. Cultivate the key skills necessary to unleash passionate, powerful words. Then, learn how to harness them on the page without losing your sanity.
Bridget draws on her experiences as a psychotherapist and film-writer, and her work with writers through her company ‘Wild Words’.
She’s noticed that there’s a certain freedom from restraint, experienced by Swanwickers as they leave their normal lives for a week, which feeds into the discussion on what it means to write wild, rather than write tamed.
Being a writer is a dangerous job, but is there anything else in the world you’d rather be doing?
Booking via Swanwick Writers' Summer School
In this creative writing workshop, Bridget introduces techniques to strengthen writing in all genres (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, spoken word). Skills taught will include:
– Using sensory impressions
– Harnessing emotion
– Moving from creative block to creative flow
Bridget will devote time to the ground-breaking work, and flourishing market, of the ‘new nature writers’ whose mission is to rebuild community and reconnect us with the natural world.
All levels of experience welcome.
At Swanwick Writers' Summer School, Derbyshire, UK.
11.15am-12.15pm, and 2.15pm-3.15pm
Finding your voice is the gold at the end of the rainbow for emerging writers. It’s about much more than style and technique; it’s a journey that moves us from trying (consciously or unconsciously) to emulate others, to learning how to sound like our self.
Find our voice, and we open up a direct channel between the expression of the writer, and the effect on the reader. Voice not only underlies all creative work, but also informs our approach to publishers, agents, and marketing via social media.
During this course we’ll look at questions such as: What does it mean to write ‘authentically’? How can we sound like ourselves? (And for that matter who are we in the first place?) Be prepared to get philosophical and psychological!
Tickets available from Swanwick Writers' Summer School.
Uppingham School. Part of Uppingham Summer School.
The writing process can sometimes feel overwhelming. In this course, through the writing of a short story or narrative poem, you’ll learn a system for chunking down any project into bite-size, do-able pieces.
You’ll choose your idea and start writing. You’ll be supported to negotiate moments of stuckness and block, to complete the first draft. Moving into the second draft we will consciously apply specific tools to bring passion and power into your story. These will include: emotion, sensory impressions, narrative structure, and dialogue. You’ll come away with a beautiful product, of publishable quality. You’ll feel satisfied and invigorated by the process.
This course is suitable for fledgling and experienced writers, and writers of all types of fiction and non-fiction. Please arrive at the first session with three ideas, each of 25 words or less, that could form the basis for a short story or narrative poem of up to 2000 words.
Barnwell Country Park. As part of the Oundle Festival of Literature.
Nature writing is now one of the fastest growing genres; the new generation of nature writers are selling like hot cakes. Come and find out about the market, and how to write for it.
It’s no longer the idealised rural life and landscapes of the pastoral poetry tradition. It’s raw, edgy, groundbreaking, thought-provoking, politically challenging, and society changing. It takes in poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. It fuses nature writing, travel writing, philosophy and psychology. Its writers heal and find meaning through contact with nature, and so do its readers.
Us nature-writers are no longer regarded as something akin to train spotters. We’re cooler than Madonna! Join us.
Tickets available from http://www.oundlelitfest.org.uk/
I’m not promising you’ll master Occitan lyric poetry from the high middle ages, but, in the spirit of the troubadours, we’ll explore how to bring words alive on the page and in oral storytelling.
Subjects include: movement, rhythm and rhyme in poetry and prose. How music and poetry, as well as spoken and written words, inform each other. Our themes will be chivalry and courtly love - what else!
The workshop is suitable for anyone who loves words in any form. No experience necessary. You don't need to book- just turn up. English and French speakers welcome. The workshop will take place in English, with simultaneous translation into French.
At The London School of Economics and Political Science.
A toolkit of small, playful experiments, to revolutionise how you tell stories in all genres. We will take body awareness, movement and spoken word into writing, with a focus on the ground-breaking world of ‘new’ nature writing, one of the fastest growing and best-selling genres.
With her focus on learning from nature, and the embodied, holistic experience of the storyteller, university tutor and psychotherapist Bridget Holding is revitalising traditional creative writing teaching.
All levels of writing experience, and confidence, welcome!
For further information and tickets see The London School of Economics website.
Bridget Holding (@BridgetHolding) is a former screenwriter, whose articles have appeared in Writing Magazine and The Psychotherapist, among other publications. She is also a UKCP registered psychotherapist. She’s a former associate lecturer for The Open University, and has been a tutor of creative writing for The University of Exeter since 2008. Bridget is the founder of Wild Words. Her online and real-world courses explore the relationship between ourselves, our world and our words.
The writing process can sometimes feel overwhelming. In this course, through the writing of a short story or narrative poem, you’ll learn a system for chunking down any project into bite-size, do-able pieces.
You’ll choose your idea and start writing. You’ll be supported to negotiate moments of stuckness and block, to complete the first draft. Moving into the second draft we will consciously apply specific tools to bring passion and power into your story. These will include: emotion, sensory impressions, narrative structure, and dialogue. You’ll come away with a beautiful product, of publishable quality. You’ll feel satisfied and invigorated by the process.
This course is suitable for fledgling and experienced writers, and writers of all types of fiction and non-fiction. Please arrive at the first session with three ideas, each of 25 words or less, that could form the basis for a short story or narrative poem of up to 2000 words.
Tickets available from: www.uppinghamsummerschool.co.uk
The writing process can sometimes feel overwhelming. Here, you’ll learn a system for chunking down any project into bite-size, do-able pieces. After all, you wouldn’t try and eat an elephant whole, would you?
Tickets available from: www.swanwickwritersschool.org.uk
The Weekly Writing Group
Writing A Story From Beginning To End
Begins 17th May 2016
2.30-4.30pm Tuesday afternoons
Green Horizons, Puivert, Aude, France.
90 Euros for 6 sessions
In the six sessions you will be guided through the first and second draft writing process, to come away with a completed short story, or narrative poem (fiction or non-fiction) of publishable quality.
Places must be booked in advance.
Contact Bridget on (+33) 06 95 69 58 45
bridgetholding@wildwords.org
This workshop will focus on ways to bring aliveness into writing and how to experience a deeper connection with the natural world, through words. Using the natural environment of Lower Shaw Farm as inspiration, we’ll explore key skills to help make words jump off the page.
Tickets available from: www.swindonfestivalofliterature.co.uk
An exploration into creative writing, in the stunning environment of Batsford Arboretum.
Tickets available from www.campdenlitfest.co.uk
You will be invited to start with a fiction or non-fiction short story, or narrative poem idea. In the six sessions you will be guided through the first and second draft writing process, to come away with a completed short story, of publishable quality.
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