Online Courses, Coaching & Workshops

Join Holly Winter-Hughes (How to Leave a Body, Verve) as she gently guides you through the process of using writing as a way to connect with ourselves and our embodied stories.

Looking at poems that explore themes of embodiment, as well as tapping into our own somatic experiences to enrich our work.  

 Holly used poetry to reconnect with her body after years of dissociation and embodied trauma. She is passionate about bringing the stories held in our bodies to the light, finding fresh way to tell them to deepen personal and community connection.  In this celebration of our bodies and our stories, we’ll bring our somatic experiences into our work, for more visceral, sensuous and engaging writing. 

This series is all about connection, healing and community.  Each session will focus on autonomy and only going as deep as you wish in your own writing. You will be encouraged and supported in taking ownership of your words. You are welcome to return each session to build on your embodied experiences, but each session will also welcome newcomers. 

Holly Winter-Hughes is a poet, facilitator and researcher passionate about using writing to express the stories and silence held within our bodies. Her work explores embodiment, memory, trauma and resilience, drawing on her experiences and academic research to illuminate the unseen and unheard. Holly’s poetry has been commissioned by organisations including Apples & Snakes, Arvon and Poetry Pharmacy, and she has shared her work widely across the UK, performing for the BBC, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Satellite of Love and Raise the Bar. 

It can be difficult to find stillness in our busy lives. Attention restoration theory emphasises the benefits of ‘soft fascination’ and ‘mind wandering.’ Psychoanalyst, Masud Khan, believed that stepping away from impulsive productivity to ‘lie fallow’ could aid creativity. Poets know better than most this need for quiet, reflective time, for the liminal space in which inspiration and imagination can spring.

In this course, you will be guided through fallow experiences, be read to and given a creative toolkit of experimental prompts to try together and alone. Resting the Mindland is designed to explore how fallowness and activities that encourage soft fascination can help your poetry breathe and allow you to return to the world rejuvenated.

Suitable for anyone who wants to allow a little more poetry and stillness into
their life, there are five 2 hour online workshops, starting Monday 2 February, then an individualised 15 minute online ‘poetry reap’ with Becky where
you receive feedback on poetry you have produced. We will then gather again on Monday 16th March to 'share the harvest', an invitation to share your work with the group online.

Becky Cherriman is a poet, creative facilitator and performer based in the north of England who has been named on lists such as the Women’s Poetry Competition, the Forward Prize and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg. She has worked closely with communities and writers since 2003, and from 2019-2024, was a Teaching Fellow at the University of Leeds, leading the Lifelong Learning Centre’s Creative Writing Pathway. Single poems have been published by Seren, Mslexia, The North, TEXT, Bloodaxe, Well Versed, erbacce and Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings.

Her work is collected in her 2016 Saboteur longlisted poetry pamphlet Echolocation (Mother’s Milk), and collection Empires of Clay (Cinnamon Press). She also writes fiction and for theatre. 

Becky finds moments of fallowness in woodland walks, cold water dips and cloud-gazing. www.beckycherriman.

Writing a full-length work involves a long haul, and the journey to completion is rarely linear. Coaching is a powerful modality which supports and strengthens your creative practice so that you experience breakthroughs and create inner shifts in how you relate to your work-in-progress.

Book a series of five or ten online coaching sessions with our very own Poetry Pharmacy coach Julia Forster who specialises in working with poets and who has worked with hundreds writers of all genres to support and sustain their artistic practice. Explore your individual and singular gift to create.

How it works

Book an initial, free 30-minute conversation with Julia here and then decide which of the various coaching packages you’d like to book. Blocks of five sessions (£325) or ten sessions (£520) are available, with the option to add on a four-night writer retreat in the stylish Writers’ Cabin in Machynlleth, mid-Wales.

Coaching sessions are sixty minutes long, held on Zoom and at a frequency to suit you. Julia’s approach is strength-based and compassionate and is tailored individually to each client. 

About Julia Forster

Julia is a fully-qualified coach, specialising in coaching authors and poets, who also hosts writers on self-lead retreats in a Writers’ Cabin near Machynlleth, mid-Wales. With a career in publishing spanning over 25 years, she works freelance in PR for independent presses and is Co-Director of Being A Writer at The Literary Consultancy where she facilitates the group coaching programme, Amplify. Poets and poetry festivals she has devised PR campaigns for include: Deborah Alma; Dean Atta; Inua Ellams; Jacqueline Saphra and BBC Contains Strong Language.

She has published a novel What a Way to Go (Atlantic Books) and a book of non- fiction Muses (Oldcastle Books), while her poetry pamphlet is currently on submission.

Writing a poem is a personal thing, but there are skills to be learnt too, especially where editing your work is concerned, and our Poetry Surgeries aim to help you through this process. They offer a rare opportunity to work one on one with a professional poet, who will address any specific difficulties you are having as well as giving in depth feedback on each poem.

Receive detailed one to one advice on up to four of your own poems from resident Poetry Pharmacy poet Rhiannon Hooson. Poetry Surgeries are by appointment and can take place either face to face at the Poetry Pharmacy, or online.  There is a £60 charge for an hour long consultation.

How it works

You will submit your work in advance by email, then visit the Poetry Pharmacy where you’ll receive private and detailed feedback on your poems over coffee. If you can’t make it to Shropshire, your surgery can take place online or via email!  

Our approach is constructive, supportive and positive, and you’ll go away with concrete ideas for your work as well as plenty to think about.

About Rhiannon

Rhiannon Hooson is a Welsh poet, author and editor. She has won major awards for her work, including an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors, and her first book, The Other City, was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award. In the last few years, she has been a Literature Wales bursary recipient, a Hay Festival Writer at Work, poetry editor of Creative Countryside magazine, and the judge of the PENfro festival poetry competition. She has a PhD in poetry from the University of Lancaster, and spent time living and working in Cumbria and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, before settling in the Welsh marches. Goliat, her second collection, is out now from Seren.

"Rhiannon was always so positive and clear in her feedback and I have come away with a host of new ideas that I would never have attempted without her support."

- Tina Cole