Queer Nature Poetry Course with James McDermott | £108/£72

Workshop dates

Starting Wednesday 20th October and running every Wednesday evening for 6 weeks. 

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 and explore the queerness of nature in your poetry. There will also be opportunities to read aloud your work and receive constructive peer feedback.

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