Poetry Day: September

Charleston in Lewes

Join us for a day-long poetry workshop that takes you out onto the downland landscape surrounding Charleston.We begin with coffee at Charleston before setting out on foot across the South Downs, notebooks in hand.From William Wordsworth to Virginia Woolf, landscape and writing have long been intertwined. Being outdoors often allows writers to feel less forced, more instinctive, more alert to detail. This workshop aims to help you generate new work and find fresh inspiration in landscape and movement.The pace will be steady and unhurried. Along the way, we pause to read and discuss poems shaped by landscape - writing that engages with space, weather, solitude and wilderness. The emphasis is on close attention: how walking shifts thought, how being outdoors sharpens language.Late morning we return to Charleston for lunch, with time to explore the garden or visit the shop before the afternoon session.In the afternoon, you will develop new work drawn from the morning's walk. Through structured prompts and practical exercises, we focus on craft: building, refining and editing poems with clarity and precision.You will leave with new writing in progress, practical techniques to carry forward into your own practice, and a renewed sense of how place can energise the page.