Arvon writing retreat - Exploring Feminine Creativity

One week at Arvon, Totley Barton. It's a hard place to find, and an even harder place to leave.

We ate together, wrote together, shared poems, stories, and songs. We learned a lot from each other, and about different styles of writing. We drank and sang around a campfire. We challenged ourselves, and absorbed knowledge from our incredible mentors Salena Godden, Nikita Gill and Joelle Taylor. The Godden-Gill School of Feminist Upstarts!

I left with a few great poems, new found confidence, a coven of poetry friends, and a renewed feeling of having a place in the poetry world (and knowing what that looked like). An unexpected bonus, was to have a sense of what it means to me to be a woman, and to find a place among a group of strong like-minded women. That was very powerful and I'm sure it will shine through in my future work. There were many highlights for me, and I'll be making reels about these and posting them on the gram. Follow me on Instagram @emmacpoetry Once again, I am so grateful to Arts Council England for the DYCP grant and the opportunities it has opened up for me.

Arvon retreat cohort / new friends