New College Festival – Poetry Writing Workshop

Jane McKie is leading a poetry writing workshop at the Althaus-Reid Room, New College, on Friday 6 November, from 1:00 to 2:30 pm. It's part of the New College Festival of Books and Belief, which the School of Divinity is putting on this year.

McKie is a poet, and the session takes its lead from her collection Precise Mysteries, which asks how to articulate grace on the page. That's the core of what the workshop works through: the tension between abstract spiritual inquiry and precise, grounded detail. The whole thing is built around the effect of juxtaposing the numinous and the concrete, and you'll explore that through a mix of exercises and examples. It's designed for aspiring poets of all contemplative backgrounds, so you don't need a particular faith or a specific tradition behind you to get something out of it.

The workshop runs for an hour and a half in person, and because it's part of the New College Festival of Books and Belief, it sits alongside other events the School of Divinity has lined up. If you're into poetry and the intersection of the spiritual and the everyday, this is exactly the kind of thing that festival is built for.

It's in the Althaus-Reid Room at New College, School of Divinity, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LX, on Friday 6 November, 1:00–2:30 pm.