[Image description: Romalyn, smiling with shoulder-length brown hair.]

About the course

“What keeps me motivated is not the food itself but all the bonds and memories the food represents.” says American celebrity chef, Michael Chiarello. The sensory inputs we get from a meal (from its taste, smell, to its texture) can trigger different comforting and challenging memories of our own experiences, people, and places. Psychologists have studied the significance of food experiences in the formation of one’s character. For some, food symbolizes family and a community, for others, it symbolizes survival.

In this workshop, we will draft poems on the theme of ‘food’ and ‘home’, using innovative techniques that can be utilized anytime we need them. We will engage in being mindfully aware of our relationship to food and how it can help us evoke our imaginative energy. We will write poems and look at the work of inspiring poets to examine how we can shape and improve our own writing. We will think of new ways of writing that navigate both the familial and personal, and the broad, socio-cultural and political world.

Who is it for?

This course is for all underrepresented writers – creatives who face barriers to opportunities due to mental health issues, physical health/disability, sensory impairment, learning disabilities, neurodivergence, substance misuse, survivors, working class backgrounds, and those from the LGBTQIA+, and Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities or traveller communities.

Dates

Thursdays: March 10, 17, 24, 31, April 7, 14 2022
The course will be held online via Zoom.

Times

6 – 8 pm

Cost

£12 total for all six workshops (£2 per session). As we have limited spaces available we are charging a small fee to ensure commitment to the course.

About the course facilitator

Romalyn Ante is a Filipino-born, Wolverhampton-based poet, editor, translator, and essayist. She is co-founding editor of harana poetry. Her debut collection is Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto & Windus). Her honors include the Poetry London Prize, Manchester Poetry Prize, Oxford Brookes EAL Poetry Prize, Society of Author’s Foundation Award, Creative Future Writers’ Award, amongst others. She was also selected for a 2021/22 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. Her work has been featured in BBC World News, World Literature Today, BBC Radio 4, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue UK, Southbank Center, Book Week Scotland, Birmingham Literature Festival, and Verve Poetry Festival. She has also run a number of poetry workshops including those for The Poetry School, Royal College of Nursing, UniSlam, and Writing West Midlands. Apart from being a writer, she also works full-time as a nurse practitioner, specializing in providing different psychotherapeutic treatments.

Click here to find out more about Romalyn

If the course is full, you can sign up for the waiting list by emailing us here.