Vegetation Verse

Nadia Kingsleyis director/ editor of Fair Acre Press.She is currently project-managing her fourth Arts Council England-funded project "Painting by Pixels" in which she is being mentored in disability and mental health training; and will be the workshop assistant to fellow visual artist Paul Kielty in workshops at Designs in Mind, Oswestry and Derwen College, Gobowen - as well as showing her artwork in a group exhibition at Qube gallery in August 2018 along with Paul Kielty, Isaac and Giancarlo Facchinetti.She is a poet. She has, in print, 2 poetry pamphlets with David Calcutt -Road KillandThrough the Woods;Lawn Lorein which she collaborated with grasses expert John Handley; andA Year in Herbspamphlet with herbalist Jayne Palmer and twelve visual artists. She has collaborated with visual artist Sue Challis and the resulting poetry-art collaboration is shown at VAN gallery late March through April  2018.She organised and M.C.ed a poetry and nature day at Merefest, 2017; and organised an afternoon of poetry and music at Mid Wales Arts in April 2017.

Nadia Kingsley

Join Steph Morris in a  two-parter poetry workshop  based on plants!
Sat 1 May 2021 10.00–13.00 
Sat 15 May 2021 10.00–13.00
Cost: £25

All plants have a story to tell. The texture of their lives, their joys and perils, challenges and triumphs might just mirror our own. We will read poems featuring plants by poets such as Louise Gluck, Jackie Kay and William Carlos Williams to study the various ways they have described and evoked plants, whether they have used the plants to introduce other thoughts in their poems or simply allowed them to grow. We will then take a close look at the flora around us, from seedlings to trees, weeds to houseplants, before writing our own poems. We will consider how to bring plants to life in poetry and if we can find metaphors for our own lives or for events around us, as well as issues of perspective, voice and diction. There will be screen breaks to carry out assignments and a follow-up workshop to discuss the poems participants have written.Tutor: Steph Morris is an artist, gardener, writer and translator. His pamphlet Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow! was published by Fair Acre Press last year, and his poems have been included in the anthologies Diversifly, also from Fair Acre Press, and Write to be Counted, as well as in magazines such as Rialto, Ink Sweat &amp; Tears and Ambit. In 2019 he won the Live Canon ‘Borough Prize’. Three times selected for the Poetry School’s Mixed Borders programme he was poet in residence in various London gardens where he planted poems in flowerbeds and provided writing exercises for visitors. His poetry translations have appeared in MPT and on no-mans-land.org, including work by Kurt Drawert and Tina Stroheker and he is currently translating a collection by Austrian legend Ilse Aichinger. He runs a monthly translation workshop at the Goethe Institute, London. He graduated from the Poetry School / Newcastle University MA in Writing Poetry in 2017 as part of the inaugural cohort. steph-morris.comEndorsements for Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow! include:Tamar Yoseloff ~ Like the plants he nurtures as a gardener, Steph Morris’s poems are fed by a desire to believe the world is a benevolent place;but his jaunty humour and O’Haraesque casualness can often mask his more serious concerns about the environment and our attitude towards it. This is a playful and exuberant debut from a poet with a wonderfully original voice.David Constantine ~ These poems ask an ancient question: how should we live? Their chief way of addressing it – a deft and knowledgeable moving to and fro between human lives and the lives of plants and animals – is in our times more than a strategy or conceit. For unless we make such connections and see our interdependence, we shall perish, taking countless other species with us.Jacqueline Saphra ~ This book takes you on a temporal and psycho-geographical journey through both the urban and rural, shares some childhood lessons in toxic masculinity and its pitfalls, shines a light on small, devastating human cruelties and offers some hot tips on gardening. Carefully positioned in the context of a planet in ecological and political crisis, love persistently comes through: love of the labour in the garden, love of family, love of the natural world. In this poetic universe, voices of nature are as real as the voices of the human ones: trains and roads are as much a part of the landscape as clematis, snail and fern.Whether or not you’ve ever picked up a pair of secateurs or wielded a spade, as you dig into these poems you will be reminded of the interconnectedness of all things and will find yourself rooted in the good earth in all its fertile and dirty glory. Dates and times: 2 sessions of 3 hours, with screen breaks for assignments and refreshments etc.Sat 1 May 2021 10.00–13.00 BSTSat 15 May 2021 10.00–13.00 BSTCost: £25 – this covers the cost of both sessionsThe zoom link will be sent out directly by StephSteph will send you an email on April 23rd which will include handouts we will use on the day and the poems we will discuss, so you can print them out if possible and familiarise yourself with them.Please get in touch in advance to discuss any access needs such as captioning. And if you have any questions please email Steph direct on herr_morris@yahoo.comThere are a maximum of 11 places availableFair Acre Press regrets there will be no refunds once bookedPamphlet tie-in: you can buy Steph Morris’ pamphlet Please don’t trample us; we are trying to grow! for the reduced price of £6 (incl p&amp;p) once booked for this workshop. (Fair Acre Press will send you an email offering this once you are booked)

Vegetation Verse

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Vegetation Verse

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