An exciting start to the Lost Words for Rye Harbour project

Katherine Crowther
, 20 February 2023
An exciting start to the Lost Words for Rye Harbour project
Linda and Catherine making notes © S. Morgan

The first of six nature-writing workshops took place at the end of January at the Discovery Centre and produced some great writing. Participants ranged from those who had never written before to those with experience, who wanted to write about nature for the first time. We talked to some of those who took part.

“I signed up as I had the Lost Words book," Linda told us. “I wanted to learn more about it, and to have an opportunity to meet other like-minded people.” Linda was one of the participants who hadn’t written creatively before. “The only experience of writing I’ve had has been in a work or academic context,” she explained. “I never really thought of writing creatively or attempting poetry.”

The workshop was broken up into sections where members could chat and explore various aspects of their relationship with the natural world, there were prompts and opportunities to make notes and time to put these notes together into the beginnings of a more finished piece of writing. The group investigated their memories of encounters with nature and took writing inspiration from Jackie Morris’ extraordinary artwork. “Thinking about past nature memories as a child was like opening a secret door,” Linda recalled. “It all came flooding back, vivid and real.”

Confronted with the prospect of actually starting to write a poem about one of the Lost Words species towards the end of the workshop, Linda’s initial response was “Oh no! I looked around and thought ‘everyone else is writing something wonderful’,” she went on, “I can’t just sit here being scared, so I allowed my thoughts to wander…”

Linda created a poem about Blackbirds surrounded and protected by sharp bramble thorns. It turns out she has a natural gift for poetry and a fresh and engaging way of describing both the birds and their thorny sanctuary. “I found it totally absorbing and extremely satisfying,” she went on. “I was really proud to read my poem to the others in the group.”

Catherine has been writing for as long as she can remember. “Throughout a life-time of writing intuitively, it never occurred to me there might be a process to support and enhance my practice,” she said. “The workshop gave me a wide-ranging array of resources to further explore and diversify a passion for Nature which inhabits my poetry and prose.”

Sharing work at the end of the workshop often proves nerve wracking and revelatory in equal measure. Two of the group members had never read their work to other people before and found the prospect initially intimidating. “Sharing any kind of writing is completely new to me,” one of them told us, “but the group was friendly and I felt better having heard someone else was feeling nervous, a sense of being in it together!”

Both participants felt able to share their writing in the group’s supportive environment. “It’s always scary reading your work to people you don’t know,” workshop leader Morgan explained, “but it is so valuable to everyone there. We create an atmosphere where people feel safe enough to share their work and it is usually this part of the workshop that many people say they enjoy most.” Linda certainly agreed: “I can honestly say I felt empowered and amazed,” she said. “I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process.”

The Lost Words for Rye Harbour is part of the Discover Rye Harbour project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. There are five more nature-writing workshops at the Discovery Centre, please click here to find out more.

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