Poetry Workshop - Poetry as Fixation

Ruth, a London-based poet and tutor, is running a poetry workshop called Poetry as Fixation at Morocco Bound Bermondsey on Sunday 15 November. It's a four-hour session that starts at 17:00, so you'll be there well into the evening.

The whole thing is built around one prompt: bring a current or long-standing preoccupation to the table. The idea is to take something you can't stop thinking about — a particular image, a recurring memory, a specific obsession — and use it as the engine for a poem. Ruth's approach is to lean into that fixation rather than fight it, using repetition, accumulation and return to turn a loop you're stuck in into something unexpected on the page. It's a way of working with the things that haunt you instead of trying to write around them.

Over the course of the afternoon, the session moves through guided exercises, readings and discussions. It's designed to be welcoming and inclusive, so it works just as well if you've never written a line of poetry as it does if you've been at it for years. You'll be working alongside other writers, sharing what you're stuck on and seeing how those fixations shape up when you actually put them to work.

The workshop is open to over-16s, and the venue is wheelchair accessible. Places are limited to 60, so it's worth booking early if you're keen. Tickets start from £11.33, and the whole thing runs for four hours from 17:00 on Sunday 15 November at Morocco Bound Bermondsey, 1a Morocco Street, Southwark, SE1 3HB.