Teaching is a huge part of my practice – over the last three years I’ve nurtured a supportive online offering that has helped many writers to achieve their creative goals in a way that is true to their voice.
“It really is a testament to your mentoring that I won this award. You were so wise to encourage me to just take the story and the characters at my own pace, and really work at my craft. “
Louise Powell, winner of the Sid Chaplin Award 2023
I really enjoyed the Seasons of the Witch workshop. As well as being a fantastic writer, Carmen is an excellent teacher who loves all kinds of stories, which is a wonderful combination: someone who has a genuine interest in helping other writers develop, who can draw on deep knowledge of books, and the struggles and joys of writing. Seasons of the Witch Participant
The Sea Calls Us Home
Writing Narrative Protection for the Sea through myth, folklore and lyrical non-fiction
A 5 x 2 hr session online course every second Sunday
When I was little my dad took my sister and me down to the water’s edge and said:
This is where the laws of god and man end and the law of the sea begins.
The sea is eternally unknown in a way the land cannot be because change is its element, it is made up of layers of the unknowable and so we can’t just make it a metaphor or analogy – it is a presence in its own right and it is this presence that we will explore and bring into being on this course. We’ll explore the work of the many writers who respect the sea as a place beyond metaphor including Monique Roffey, Moya Cannon, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Kirsty Logan, Cal Flyn, David Gange.
In this course we are going to explore the blurred relationship we have with the sea – the above and below of it – we’ll immerse ourselves in the language of the sea; we’ll meet the myths and mythical creatures of the sea and learn what they can teach us through their warnings and curses; we’ll traverse sea journeys – real and imagined; we’ll dive into the sea inside, and we’ll look at the work of non-fiction writers who are showing us a deeper more respectful relationship with the sea – restoring its power and mystery. I’ll share with you my writing and findings as a fisherman’s daughter and PHD student about narrative protection and the power of sea stories.
This course is suitable for writers of all levels. Please message me if you have any questions. It would be wonderful to invite you aboard!
Seasons of the Witch 2 Starting 1st October
£55 for 5 x 2 hr biweekly Sessions online
Or for those who prefer or need to work at their own pace !!Notes only version!! £25 (you receive transcripts of sessions and slides and invited to the gathering to share your work!)
Every second Sunday from 1st October 2023 @2pm – 4pm
How would you feel if someone called you a witch? Angry? Confused? Proud? Outed? What do we fear about the witch? What is the appeal?
My first witch encounter was at a little cottage museum called Winkie’s Castle in Marske, where there is a witching post and a witch’s rocking chair. It was good luck to touch the post in the low-ceilinged room packed full of tin and leather objects and a two-headed lamb. Up the creaking stairs my sister and tottered, just like Hansel and Gretel, we settled in a comfortable rocking chair cradled by the well-worn arms only to be told it was a witch’s chair. We leapt off yet it continued to rock without us for the duration of our visit. We could hear its grumbling on the wooden floor follow us round. We turned our backs hoping it would stop but it kept going, almost inviting us back. We weren’t unwelcome in its wooden arms. That scared us more than the feeling of being pushed away. We were too young to know anything about witches than Evil Edna and Grotbags, we knew they were evil because they were alone, did not fit the ‘good woman’ mould and did something that meant they had to live on the edges. But we also knew women who did live on the edges, our Aunty Nell, she was taller than most men at 6ft 2”, wore shiny red boots, read our tea leaves and said the sparks in the fire was our Granny talking to us. She lived independently alone, actively refused marriage, had the cheek to be happy about it and loved animals a lot more than humans, especially cats. So she had transgressed enough of society’s boundaries to fit the witch profile. Most of all she had power that she derived from this transgressive state.
For all these reasons and because the dark days are coming I want to look again at the figure of the witch in fiction in my next course Seasons of the Witch 2.
It will be 5 session course of 2 hour sessions, biweekly on Sundays starting from 1st October. (£55 for the whole course)
On this course we will take a deep dive to uncover those women in fiction who define their own brand of femininity by breaking the rules of what makes a ‘good woman.’ We will uncover the origin of the witch in fiction and folklore and what present stories have inherited from this legacy. We’ll look at witches in children’s fiction, in particular Mary Poppins, to understand the ingredients of making a witch character. We’ll delve into the worlds of witches – to learn how to build our own witch-world on the edge of the edge. We’ll look at contemporary representations of witches in fiction that punk and subvert ideas of femininity. We’ll also discover what ritual can teach us about structuring our stories – how to guide the reader from the threshold moments through to transformation. Some of the writers we’ll be looking at will include Madeline Miller, Pamela Lyndon Travers, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Marysé Conde, R. F. Kuang, Emilia Hart, Syliva Federici, Ursula Le Guin and more. In addition to these elements, there will be a writer’s choice session where writers will share a prompt inspired by their own witch fiction and an additional gathering where we will come together for a Zoom evening to share and read our aloud the work created through these sessions.
Crossing the Lines: A Writing Journey (a real one!)
I wrote the whole first draft of my novel on the train. So did Fiona Mozley, John le Carre, Anthony Trollope and lots more writers who didn’t have the luxury of a shed. Sometimes when I travel now, I look up from my little train cave and see another person scribbling in a notebook and wonder – is it a story / poem/ letter? The secret to being free to write is a chunk of uninterrupted time – and this is the gift the train gives us! There’s also this other magical thing that happens as soon as you get on a train – you stop being work-you, family-you and all the other yous who have to do the next thing on the list and so you’re truly free to just write! Imagine that! The moment you pull away from the platform – two journeys begin, the one outside to your destination and the one inside to your story / the poem / the whatever you will write. In this one off, very special workshop we’ll board the train, and I’ll share the secrets of writing in this in-between place. We’ll work with gentle but deep prompts inspired by the mysteries, sights and sounds of the train and see what new ideas travel to us.
This workshop is suitable for writers of stories, poetry and memoir.
Writers of all levels are very welcome.
Bring some train snacks and I’ll see you aboard.
Carmen Marcus is an award-winning writer from Saltburn. Her novel (the one she wrote on the train) HOW SAINTS DIE won New Writing Norths Northern promise award and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. She was named a Radio 3 Verb New Voice for her poetry that has been performed on BBC Radio, The South Bank Centre, Durham Book Festival (all of it written, edited and rehearsed on trains). She is currently working on her poetry collection THE SKIN BOAT (she loves boats too!) and her debut play commissioned by the Writers Guild of Great Britain AND THE EARTH OPENED UP UNDER HER (in which a mother cycles to hell!).
Pen-Wife: A monthly gathering of writers to focus on craft in prose and poetry projects, from planning to earning your ending.
Pen-Wife: A monthly gathering to work on craft
Starts 25th July 2023
@7-9pm
Time: 7pm – 9pm
Cost: £10
This is monthly session created to tackle those big and little questions about the craft of writing. We will begin by looking at the possibilities and perils of starting a project, exploring what questions we need to ask before committing to the page. Future sessions will be responsive to group interests and needs.
Jiggery Folkery – How to weave the practical magic of folktales into our own work.
Starts 9th July 2023
5 Bi-weekly Sessions Every Other Sunday from 2.00pm to 4.00pm (GMT)
Jiggery Folkery: Crafting Contemporary Folk
Starts Sunday 9th July 2023
@2-4pm
Cost: £55 Early Bird and Discount / £65 after 3rd July
Folk tales, traditions and lore open our eyes to those inbetween worlds inhabited by strange beings of light and dark, but they are as practical as they are magical. Folktales also open our eyes to social realities, inequalities, injustice, reveal hidden histories and give shape to shared traumas. In this midsummer course we will learn how to understand and craft the very practical magic of folktale into our own work. We will let our imaginations run wild through the deep dark woods, down to Fiddler’s Green and under the fairy hills to find out how to interweave folk tales and their tropes into our stories. We’ll begin by looking at the origins of folk stories and their meanings and then explore how other writers chop, change, twist and weave folk elements into their stories to bring new meanings. Along the way we’ll look at folk stories from around the world as well as Benjamin Myers, Robert Hardy, Sarah Moss, Helen Oyeyemi, Eliza Clark, Carmen Maria Machado, Juan Rulfo and Sarah Perry.
A Story of Own’s Own – Writing about your life for The Northern Writers Studio
Tuesday 9th May 2023
Tuesday 9th May, 7pm, £20
Join Carmen Marcus for her final workshop with us as our creative partner.
From Carmen:
We each carry our story within us, and it’s as unique as our fingerprint or our voice. The challenge to telling our own story is how to hold onto that distinct shape. There are so many forms open to us to tell our stories now: autofiction, braided essay, poetic essay, memoir and a mixture of them all, that finding a form is part of the personal process of discovery. In this session we’ll explore how to find the right shape to tell your story by discovering and experimenting with techniques from my own journaling process and some of the most influential memoirists and essayists.
“Always learn loads when I go to Carmen’s workshops. Inspiring and challenging.”
Julie Noble, Award Winning Author
I have never experienced a course anything like the ones Carmen runs. She is an original, magical and passionate teacher and facilitator, I find myself getting quite breathless with inspiration during sessions and come away with my mind buzzing!
Astra Bloom Award Winning Poet and Author
Holding Ground: How to Write Powerfully About Place
Starts 23rd April 2023
Starting 23rd April 2023
£55 before 18th April or £65 after for 5 two hour sessions
Every Second Sunday
2pm – 4pm
The very first stories, our shared folklore from around the world, are stories about the land, how it was created, how to find food and water, how to live in balance with nature, and how to navigate the places we inhabit. Our most contemporary storytellers speak of the land with awe, enchantment and urgency to protect what is slipping away with climate change. In this way writers do something really powerful, they create narrative protection for the places that inspire their stories. Tales have always protected the land, think of the badluck stories that have stopped developers from disturbing the fairy forts in Ireland and Scotland, to one of the pioneers of conservation Beatrix Potter and her tales of Peter Rabbit and friends.
In this course we will explore the many ways that humans have held their ground in their writing about place – from unearthing the dark side of nature to stories that seek to re-enchant our wonderlands. We’ll look at stories from oral cultures from around the world, as well as stories from past and present that explore the many facets of writing place.
We’ll explore the Orkney Folktales captured by Tom Muir, Ben Okri, The Brontës, Cheryl Strayed, Barbara Cisneros, Elizabeth Von Arnin, Fukido Chiyo-Ni, Zoe Gilbert, Katherine May, and may more writers and poets who map the wondrous and strange places in our world. We’ll be looking at poets too, and this course will also include a Writer’s Choice text.
PREVIOUS COURSES
Starts 5th February 2023
!!SOLD OUT!!
All Writing is Re-Righting
Starts Sunday 5th February 2pm – 4pm
£55 before 31st January or £65 thereafter
Bi-Weekly
All Writing is Re-Righting
There is a saying that all writing is rewriting. Does that mean that there are no new stories to be told? It certainly didn’t mean that for Shakespeare or the Grimm Brothers or Margaret Atwood or the countless other writers who felt that the stories they rewrote contained secrets and silences that had a right to be told. For the great rewriters their quest is to find the untold stories: the silenced characters, the hidden themes, the alternative perspectives and re-right the erasures and gaps in the story. In this course we’ll explore the work of the re-writers who took fairytales, myths and histories and found the new hidden stories within them. We’ll look at the choices these writers have made about character, plot, structure and form to enrich our own writing and learn the art of rewriting and re-righting. This will help your writing if you’re interested in rewriting and adaptation, but if you are working on an original idea, you’ll discover the many possibilities of using old story patterns to create something new. We’ll draw upon many works of fiction and neo-history, but we’ll focus on rewriters of fairytale (Angela Carter, A.S. Byatt), folklore (Zoe Gilbert), myth (Margaret Atwood), history (Toni Morrison), self (Annie Ernaux) and the future (Octavia E Butler).
This course is suitable for writers of all levels. For those who are seeking an original idea or developing an existing work.
If you have any questions about this course please do get in touch.
I would say these successes are almost entirely down to the Second Sunday sessions:
– Getting on the Writers Block North East programme to develop a novel
– Having a short story published (The Lowing, Seventy2One/ Massive Overheads chapbook), a story I developed during one of the courses.
– Being selected as a Northern Short Story Festival Academy writer
I think these are all consequences of growing in confidence as a writer in a safe, welcoming and encouraging space, and also down to the insight I have gained into quite diverse realms of literature, and the craft of writing, via both the presentation part of the sessions and the creative tasks. Clearly there is a lot of preparation that goes into the sessions, but I am always struck by Carmen’s ability to respond to what happens in the sessions in the most refined, thoughtful way. This listening, this awareness of what is happening, also creates the space for imagination and creativity to enter and means that feedback is both constructive and meaningful. Carmen shares her talents in such a generous way, as well as championing the writing of others. It’s not surprising that people come back each session, and that the writers on the courses do go on to achieve writing success.
Lydia Gill, Writer
Strange Days: Exploring the Surreal
Starts 6th November 2022
£55 Early Bird / £65 Full Price
FREE SPACE AVAILABLE
2 hour 5 biweekly sessions
What if your story just doesn’t fit neatly inside the three-act structure? What if you want to draw upon structures and influences outside the Western Canon? What if the world we live in and the world we want to represent on the page are in a kaleidoscopic freefall of unbelievability? When we hit the limits of the great plot machine; the limits of language; of logic and character continuity we turn to the surreal. We experiment with the ways that we can interweave dream and fantasy with reality, we disrupt the rational and play with time and structure, we make doors into the unconscious, we learn how to craft images and symbols to hold capture fleeting meanings. And somehow what happens is something that feels powerful, true and disorientating at the same time.
This course will look at the work of early and new surrealist to learn how to play with the limits of fiction to represent the unbelievable in this chaotic world.
Ben Okri’s, Haruki Murikami, Italo Calvino, Ursula Le Guin, Sjón, AS Byatt, Leonora Carrington, Edwidge Danticat and more.
This course isn’t just for those who want to write
Earn Your Ending
Date: 26th July
Platform: Zoom
Time: 7pm – 9pm
Cost: £12
Whether you’re writing a novel, short story or poem, sensing your ending and the journey you need to get there can totally unmoor you. When I was writing How Saints Die, I thought I knew where my story was going, but my story had other ideas and I had to learn to read the patterns and currents in my story to bring the ending home that I needed. In this one-off session we will look at the elements that make an ending satisfying or unsatisfying, we’ll explore how the ending is formed by the patterns you build in your story as much as the plot and how to end your story but stay in the minds of your readers.
If you have any questions or would like to take part please email carmenellen@hotmail.co.uk for further details.
Online Course Start Date: Sunday 1st May 5 bi-weekly sessions every Sunday from 2-4pm Cost: £65 / £55 (before 18th April)
Why are we drawn to the shadows, the ruins, the mysteries and monsters? We want to read and write into these forbidden spaces, but the deeper into the dungeons we go, the more we discover. Gothic disrupts the boundaries between real / dream, ancient / technological, male / female, domestic / uncanny, moral / monstrous, body / soul. And it’s female gothic writers who dance witchily on these boundaries, using the gothic tropes of bloody chambers, madness and body horror to say all those forbidden things only gothic literature can. In this course we’re going to learn the lessons from the crypt from leading gothic writers about how to bring shadowy depths to our own stories.
We’ll begin with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to open the puzzle box of gothic preoccupations with the body: dead and alive, science and its limits and all the stuff that gothic horror is made on. We’ll head straight into the strange gothic interiors of The Yellow Wallpaper and others, to learn how to blur that line between delirium and reality. From here we’ll examine the doppelgangers in gothic, the weird sisters of Jane Eyre and Bertha, Shirley Jackson’s Blackwood sisters and Daisy Johnson’s Sisters. We’ll discover why characters split and how to bring this fragmentation to our own protagonists. In Weird Sisters part 2, we’ll look at the representation of witches and witchery in story, in Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching and Syvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes. In the final session we’ll reflect on new directions and unexplored territories for the Gothic to disrupt. In addition to the 5 sessions there will be an open mic night which will give participants who wish to the chance to share new work created and listen to the terrific tales we make together.
1st May 15th May 29th May 12th June 26th June
A New Creative Writing Course with Carmen Marcus
Survival of the Folklorists
Learn how fairy tales are adapted, retold and reinvented to keep teaching us lessons on life, love and the wilderness.
Of all varieties of stories, fairy tales are the most robust, resilient and enduring, there is always a new version to be told on the page, stage or screen about a sleeping girl or a transformed beast. What is it about these tales that enables them to survive, how do we go about adapting one and what can we learn from their subjects and structures to make stronger stories of our own? In this course we will discover the folklore and fairy tale revolution that adapted and redefined what fairy tales mean, unearthing hidden characters, weaponizing the virgin victims and beasting the beauties.
Fairy tales are our inherited stories they are not authored, they don’t belong to a single writer or generation, they are like family recipes, handed down to be tweaked and punked and played with to tell something new. We’ll excavate the story bones of what makes a fairy tale structure work and then learn to play with all the elements that can be transformed, reworked and reimagined to give us that magic-shiver of new knowledge. To guide us through these crooked woods we’ll use the maps provided by Angela Carter’s Bloody Chamber, Kirsty Logan’s The Rental Heart, Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters, Katie Hale’s My Name is Monster, Karen Russell’s St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raise by Wolves and Carmen Maria Machiado’s Her Body and Other Parties.
Start Date: January 23rd 2022
Sundays 2pm – 4pm
5 bi-weekly sessions
Cost: £55 until 9th January £65 thereafter
One sponsored free place available if you need this.
If you need to wait till January pay check just let me know.
Have you ever been out of bounds: the furthest reaches of the playground, the dodgiest nightclub in town, that hang out, that scratch of woodland? We are always drawn to the underworlds, whether we are real people seeking escape or mythical grieving lovers. Why? Because no matter how scary or forbidden the underworld is, we know there are treasures to be found there, lessons to be learned there and if we don’t find them, then we cannot be whole. In this course we’ll be looking at Underworlds from myth and folk tales to the present day. We’ll visit the great underworlds, starting with Hel and Hades, stopping off at Wuthering Heights, explore Shirley Jackson’s Castle and Daphne du Maurier’s Manderley, see Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and end up in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. On this journey through underworlds past and present we will build our own underworlds for our stories. Together, in the darkening days, we’ll explore why underworlds are so important, how they test and strengthen our characters and how to make them feel real.
Participant Testimonials
I have taken part in Carmen’s Brave New Worlds, and Sermon’s in Stone courses. They are like no other writing courses I have ever done. Full of the exploration of written word, playing with creation in evocative ways. Carmen’s classes create an atmosphere of kindness and cosetting over the void of zoom where people feel safe and sheltered enough to share their experience of the often very vulnerable process of putting pen to paper, reading work fresh off the page. Carmen makes the whole experience as joyful and important to the learning process as writing words down. Her courses are superbly planned with exceptional notes and reading guides. They end up feeling like a mix of your favourite book club, a writing support group, and are guided by someone who understands that sometimes classes take themselves weird and wonderful places. Lisa Sargeant, Writer
I’ve always been quite a focused writer. I tend to pick a project and run with it for a long time. And while I think this is a good thing, it can also be quite mentally tiring. Carmen’s sessions have encouraged me to play and experiment in a way which makes me more focused on the process and less worried about the finished product, and there’s a real joy in that. I think, when I’ve finished my current big project, I’d like to experiment more. Jenna Warren, Bookseller
This course is suitable for beginner writers, writers who are just starting out on a project or are already working on a story.
For any writer who needs this course but for any reason can’t afford to take part.
Please email me carmenellen@hotmail.co.uk to enquire about a sponsored place.
About The Course
We each carry our story within us, as unique as our fingerprint or voice. The challenge in telling our own story is how to hold onto that distinct shape. There are so many forms open to us to tell our stories now: essay, poetic essay, memoir and a mixture of the three, that finding a form is part of the personal process of discovery. In this course we’ll explore how to find the right shape to tell your story by discovering and experimenting with techniques from some of the most influential memoirists and essayists: those who created the rules and those who rewrote them. We’ll look at the work of Jenn Ashworth, James Baldwin, Naoki Higashida, Maggie Nelson, Maggie O’Farrell, Benjamin Zephaniah and the incredible anthology Smashing It: an anthology of working class artists on life, art and making it happen. I’ll draw upon the work of other authors too. By the end of this twenty hour course you’ll have a strong sense of what will drive your personal narrative and the shape it will take.
About Me
I am an award-winning author, poet and experienced teacher and mentor. My novel How Saints Die, Vintage 2018 won New Writing North’s Northern Promise Award and was long listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize. My poetry won BBC Radio 3 Verb New Voices and has been commissioned by the Royal Festival Hall, Durham Book Festival and many more national and regional arts champions. I have designed and delivered funded arts engagement projects for Arts Council England and The Bookseller’s Association.
Participant Testimonials
I have taken part in Carmen’s Brave New Worlds, and Sermon’s in Stone courses. They are like no other writing courses I have ever done. Full of the exploration of written word, playing with creation in evocative ways. Carmen’s classes create an atmosphere of kindness and cosetting over the void of zoom where people feel safe and sheltered enough to share their experience of the often very vulnerable process of putting pen to paper, reading work fresh off the page. Carmen makes the whole experience as joyful and important to the learning process as writing words down. Her courses are superbly planned with exceptional notes and reading guides. They end up feeling like a mix of your favourite book club, a writing support group, and are guided by someone who understands that sometimes classes take themselves weird and wonderful places. Lisa Sargeant, Writer
I’ve always been quite a focused writer. I tend to pick a project and run with it for a long time. And while I think this is a good thing, it can also be quite mentally tiring. Carmen’s sessions have encouraged me to play and experiment in a way which makes me more focused on the process and less worried about the finished product, and there’s a real joy in that. I think, when I’ve finished my current big project, I’d like to experiment more. Jenna Warren, Bookseller
To book email carmenellen@hotmail.co.uk for Booking Form
Past Courses
The Hide Out – Writing About Imagined Worlds
A course for fiction writers who want to explore magical realism.
Starts 11th April / 2pm-4pm
5 biweekly sessions
Platform: Zoom
When we were kids we were magic. We could put a blanket over a table and make a cave. We could jump on the forbidden boat of Mum’s bed and tumble out into the underbed-sea. If we had a fight with our sister or didn’t want to face the bullies at school we could pass through that portal of real and hide out in these places. What we were doing was making a paracosm – an imagined world where the laws of reality are suspended so that trauma can be resolved. Storytellers have been making hideouts known as stories for forever. In this course we’re going to discover how to build paracosms into our own work by hiding out with some of the best den builders ever. We’ll drop into The Secret Garden, hop on Howell’s Moving Castle, go poaching with Danny Champion of the World and get lost in the dark with My Name is Mina (and many more). But we’ll start with the imagined world of the Brontës’s – Glass Town. You’ll learn how to create hide-outs in your own writing, why they are important to the story process, how the imagined mirrors the real, how resolution takes place and where you want to set the dial between magic and real in your work.
For writers of all levels.
£55 for bookings before the 17th March
£65 thereafter
Sponsored Places
There are a small number of sponsored places available for anyone who would like to take part but are struggling financially. Do get in touch. Don’t hesitate to wonder if you really need it. If you have to ask you do.
Past Courses
Sermons in Stones – The Power of Poetry
Starts 31st January2021
Bi-weekly
Sunday 2-4pm
Platform – Zoom
New Year Offer £55 until 1st January / £65 thereafter
‘and this our life, exempt from public haunt. Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in everything.’ Shakespeare, As You Like It
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1599
I’d like to start the New Year by discovering the power of words at their root – in poetry. What is happening to us because of the restrictions imposed on us by a global pandemic? We are trapped in a cycle of sameness to keep ourselves and each other safe and we are aware of the whispering voice of anxiety that intrudes and disrupts our daily life.
In response to these anxious times I want to invite you to explore the work of poets who transform the familiar into something that makes you shiver with a new and careful knowing. I’d like is to put into practice all these writers have to teach us: slowing down, and capturing the world we see to create a counter voice to that anxious and breathless intruder.
Over five sessions we’ll encounter poets and poetical writing from across the ages. We’ll explore Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess as a work of consolation. We’ll look at the way Liz Berry and Caleb Femi capture the voices and spirit of their familiar home-ground in words that spark and celebrate the ordinary. We’ll explore the sound sense of Jacob Polley and Dylan Thomas and get entangled in the rhythm of language. We’ll also look at the way writers become possessed by poetry in the work of Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Max Porter, how they travel the currents of a poem to unlock their own hearts.
Poetry, more than any other form is rooted in our physical connection to the earth and our bodies, and for that reason it has a kind of sacred power, poetry is a way to unlock the mystery inside even the most unreadable objects – so I hope you’ll join me to find those ‘sermons in stones’.
Email carmenellen@hotmail.co.uk for booking form.
Writer Level – all
You are especially welcome if you’ve had a bad experience with poetry in the past at school or you don’t know if poetry is your thing.
Past Courses
We and the Land
Sundays at 2pm, Bi-weekly
Starts Sunday 21st June 2020
Platform: Zoom (instructions will be provided for new Zoom users)
Price £65 (£5 discount if you have attended my previous courses online or live)
‘To begin you must be traced into the landscape, your people and your place found. Until they are you are in the wrong story.’
Niall Williams, The History of the Rain
One of the most powerful yet overlooked characters in every story is the land: it is the cradle of identity that nurtures or constrains all that grows within it. In this course we will explore our relationship with the land that shapes us in order to better understand how to write about it. We will explore the work of writers in this field (fiction and non-fiction and maybe sneak in a poet) who have tracked their identity back through the places that made them like Amy Liptrot and her incredible journey back to Orkney and sobriety in her memoir Outrun. We will not shy away from the darker side of our relationship to nature by looking at Barry Lopez’s Of Wolves and Men’. Humans have had a long and problematic relationship with wolves, from our psychological need to demonise them, colonial need to cull them to our recognition of the need to conserve their wildness. Lopez shows us what is at stake when our relationship with the land and the wild gets out of control. We’ll look at fiction writers like Zoe Gilbert and Daisy Johnson who infuse the land and their characters with a sense of the mythic and writers like Jessica Andrews who show how the physical structure of industry and cities mould ideas, dreams and identities. By the end I hope that you’ll feel inspired to write in new and challenging ways about all aspects of the territories that shape us as we explore the ‘wild wood and wild world’ (Wind and the Willows, Kenneth Grahame).
Please email me at carmenellen@hotmail.co.uk for a booking form and payment instructions. Payment can be made via PayPal or Bank Transfer.
Places are limited and going fast so please contact me as soon as you can.
Carmen Marcus is the author of the award winning How Saints Die, published by Harvill Secker and Vintage. She is a writer, performance poet and experienced creative practitioner. She has been a guest lecturer for the University of Leicester and Northumbria University. She is a regular speaker at national literary events and most recently have a lecture at Words Weekend on Sea Rescue: The myths of the Sea. Her work is deeply informed by a sense of place and how it shapes you and she’s very excited to be exploring this with you.
Carmen Marcus 