Our contributor Tamsin Hopkins is running a series of seasonal workshops on environmental poetry and prose. She is a highly experienced writer and workshop leader, and welcomes people of any ability!
All proceeds go to the Solent Seagrass Restoration Project.
List of workshops:
- Wed 10th December 2025: online poetry workshop.
- Mon 2nd March 2026: Portsmouth BookFest – short story and poetry workshop at Victoria Park Green House, Portsmouth, PO1 3HJ, 2:00-3:30pm. Tickets £5 available through Eventbrite here [SOLD OUT].
- Mon 30th March 2026: online poetry workshop. 7:00-8:30 pm. Tickets available through Eventbrite here.
- Summer 2026: online poetry workshop; details to follow.
- Autumn 2026: online poetry workshop; details to follow.
Our first workshop, on 10th December 2025, raised £34.83 and created some intriguing, sparkling, beautiful and moving first responses, as well as sparking many more ideas.
Rachel Birchley was there and had this to say:
“It was a wonderfully rousing evening, with so much packed in and lots to take away.
We started with a free-writing exercise, prompted by images of wintry scenes to evoke sensory creative responses. The workshop was brilliantly balanced between reading and responding to a diversity of winter poems and creating the foundations for crafting our own poems in similar veins, from the myriad ways we are affected by winter to how we can use this time of year to reflect and make positive personal and environmental changes.
Tamsin’s mix of subject knowledge, enthusiasm and great engagement with all of the group members was second to none and the 90 minutes seemed to fly by, as it was so enjoyable, yet I found myself with much to think about. It was very relaxed and inclusive, with people sharing their responses if they wanted to, but also no pressure if not.
Woven into the Yule-themed thread were aspects of Greek mythology and we were invited to imagine and invoke a winter goddess and what her world might look like. This was both great fun and really thought-provoking, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only attendee who managed to fill a few pages with words and lines which might lead to a new poem – or a few! Massive thanks to Tamsin for such an inspiring event.”