The Land: A Creative Writing Workshop
Saturday 31 May
10am
2-hour workshop
An Cupán Café, Mountshannon
(accessibility - manual wheelchair)
€22, €20 with wristband
Belfast-based poet, Niamh McNally will lead this workshop in nature poetry. Using poems from Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver, and Paula Meehan as prompts, the workshop will explore the theme of land within your writing – both the physical: the soil, rocks, trees and the seasons and metaphysical: our spiritual connections to landscape, ancestors, mythology, memory – and how to use place as a starting point for your work. There will be mindful discussions and visual prompts in a comfortable environment, to inspire you and get those wonderful words flowing. We are the land, and it is us. Let's explore it together and tell our stories!
Niamh McNally
Niamh McNally is a Belfast-based poet. She completed her MA in Ulster University where she co-created and was a poetry editor for The Paperclip; a student-led literary publication. Niamh is a workshop facilitator in The Seamus Heaney Homeplace, and co-ordinated the Freedom To Write Project 2024. She has been published in: The Tulsa Review, Tír na nÓg, The Galway Review, Aôthen Magazine, Words by the Water, and HOWL: New Irish Writing, and her poetry has featured on the BBC, in two climate crisis films: 'It Seems', produced by The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission & 'Defining Hope', produced by BITCNI. She was commissioned to write for the One Young World Summit (2023) and her poem ‘If Stone Could Speak’ was showcased by Bushmills as promotion for 'The Causeway Collection.' Niamh's first, solo publication 'New Impressions' was published by The John Hewitt Society and the ACNI, and just recently, she has read her poetry in The UN Buffer Zone (Cyprus) as part of Herstory's Peace Heroines Project, The NI Executive Office (Brussels), The Embassy of Ireland (The Hague), and in Dublin Castle for the 3rd Shared Island Forum. As part of the Shared Island Project, funded by The Government of Ireland, Niamh collaborated with artists from across the island and they produced 'Shared Island Symphony' - led by Alan Gilsenan (Yellow Asylum Films). Niamh is the current Poet-in-Residence for Herstory, Ireland & Translink NI. She is leading Translink's Poetry in Motion campaign and her poem 'Line Work' has just been painted on the ceiling of York Street Station's underpass as part of her residency.