Queer Nature Poetry Course with James McDermott

Workshop dates

Starting Tuesday 19th October and running every Tuesday evening for 6 weeks, last session will be Tue 24th November.

The Course

Water is a fluid body. Many mammals exhibit bisexual behaviour. Onions, potatoes and strawberries all reproduce asexually. There are around 300,000 genders of fungi. In short, nature is queer!

Through a series of writing exercises and group discussions of poems from Walt Whitman to Lisa Luxx, Caleb Parkin to Gail McConnell, learn tools and techniques to help you re-see the natural world through a queer lens, generate new queer eco-poems and explore the queerness of nature in your poetry. Throughout the course, there will be opportunities to read aloud your work and receive constructive peer feedback. The course will culminate with (optional) readings plus a discussion of how and where to submit poetry to magazines, presses and competitions. The course is aimed at poets/writers at any level.

• Attendees will learn tools to help them see the natural world through a queer lens.
• Attendees will learn tools to help them plan, write and rewrite poems.
• Attendees will learn about imagery and metaphor, form and structure, rhythm and rhyme.
• Attendees will have the space and time to share their work and receive peer feedback
• Attendees will have the space and time to read and discuss as a group extracts from seminal queer nature poems which illustrate ideas discussed in the class
• Attendees will learn tools to help them read, analyse and discuss queer nature poetry.
• Attendees will have the space and time to discuss how to start and sustain a career as a freelance poet

As part of the last session, attendees will have the opportunity, only if they wish, to share some of the writing they have done during the course.

This Zoom course will be led by James McDermott. Their spoken word collection ‘Manatomy’, published by Burning Eye Books, was long-listed for Polari’s First Book Prize 2021 and their pamphlet ‘Erased’ has just been published with Polari Press. James has a received a grant from the Arts Council to write their second collection exploring the queerness of nature and nature of queerness, with mentoring from Richard Scott (Soho; Faber & Faber).

About James

Scriptwriter, Poet & Creative Writing Teacher

Website: jamesmcdermottwriter.weebly.com

Literary Agent: Independent Talent

New poetry pamphlet 'Erased' published by Polari Press now available here.

"Erased changes the narrative of homophobic documents, revisits their language and moulds it into a glittery power-song of wonder and queer joy. McDermott’s new pamphlet confirms him as a vital voice of queer British poetry" Serge ♆ Neptune

"Erased is a crystallised gem of a collection. Emotive, evocative and ingenious. McDermott has uncovered something truly special, an iridescent revision of the canon and our received wisdoms” Rick Dove

“Erased deploys erasure poetry to answer back to decades of censorship and homophobia” Caleb Parkin

"Erased is an act of reclamation and fabulous impudence that empowers and validates" Simon Maddrell