How to Become a Writer
How to Become a Writer is a weekly writing workshop with Pele Cox.
Taking place in the upstairs space at Gather, participants will learn how to improve their creative writing technique, not to a formula, but by finding a unique voice and writing practice. Each session explores a different technique, harnessing memory and experience, sharpening the senses finding a deeper connection to surroundings.
All classes will involve reading, writing, and reciting to deepen the understanding of how writing works. We will also work on the exercises and reading assigned over the previous week. Each student will come away with three pieces of finished work, a solid writing practice and a distinctive writing style under their belts and some new writing colleagues.
£55 for all six sessions - 5:30-8:30pm on a Tuesday for six weeks.
SESSION OUTLINES:
5 November 2024 - Two Texts You Love
Identifying your potential from texts chosen by you to analyse and recite.
12 November 2024- Content & Shape
Two techniques: ‘speed writing’ helps you find the point; ‘mosaic-writing’ engages you with form and content.
19 November 2024 - Getting the Habit
How to write/when to write/where to write. Second half: Writing together, writing a group poem.
26 November 2024 - Finding Your Voice/Writing The Heart
Find a poem or passage by a writer or poet that triggers a memory. Group discussion and reading. How to write our own memories.
3 December 2024- Prose or Poetry?
And the epic in British Poetry and overview. We will study the stories, legacy structure and different translations of this great Italian masterpiece.
10 December 2024 - Performing
When you perform a poem or prose you publish it. Hearing words out loud helps us understand our work. In the last class everyone will stand up and read their finished work to the class.
This writing workshop is open to all, from beginners to those of you who are already in the process. We are opening this series to adults only at this point and the only materials you will need are a pen and paper.
Free places via our bursary scheme
Gather offers two free bursary places per workshop and would love to hear from anyone who is keen to claim their free place on this writing course with Pele. Email hello@morethanacowork.com to find out more on our bursary offer, just let us know what workshop you're interested in.
Pele Cox
Pele is a poet, performance artist, and film maker. She has been poet in Residence at TATE, John Murray, Keats-Shelley House, British School at Rome and Royal Academy of Arts. During the Covid-19 lockdown she made and streamed her first short,Lift Me Up, I Am Dying (on the death of John Keats), which was reviewed in the FT Arts section. Damian Lewis and Nicholas Rowe starred. Her next film, Dreamboat commemorates Shelley and has been filmed in Venice and London. Vincent and the Poets was performed in February 2022 at the Courtauld Institute to coincide with the exhibition Van Gogh’s Self Portraits. Her work has also been performed at BAFTA, Keats-Shelley House, John Murray, British School at Rome, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Todi Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Bradford Literature Festival, and the Villa Wolkonsky. Her work has been featured and reviewed in the FT, Sunday Times Magazine, Sunday Times Culture section, RA magazine, TATE, The Oldie, The London Magazine, and The Guardian.