This course aims to inspire, inform and challenge your writing by getting you to pay closer attention to landscape, nature and your senses. Led by writer and academic Dr Craig Jordan-Baker, the course will involve varied sessions exploring nature and how we write it. You can expect:

• Nature identification walks
• Writing nature though landscape painting
• Writing workshops
• Personal writing time
• Discussion of contemporary nature writing
• Readings and open mics
• 1-2-1 feedback with the tutor

In particular, there will be a focus on the concept of ‘Land Language’, the words we have and the words we may lack for the natural world around us. By increasing our vocabulary of nature and the ecological concepts available to us, our ability to engage with and ‘see’ nature can also change, having a profound effect on how we write and value nature.

To help support and develop your practice, you will receive friendly and constructive peer and tutor feedback on your writing through a series of small workshops. There will also be the opportunity to listen and read at open mic events, giving you the chance to learn from others and to test out your work in an informal social setting.

Dr Craig Jordan-Baker has over seventeen years’ experience as a creative writing tutor, as well as being the author of three books, The Nacullians, If the River is Hidden and Writing Landscape and Setting in the Anthropocene: Britain and Beyond. He also has experience as a dramatist, arts journalist and has published peer-reviewed research in the arts and humanities.

By the end of the course, you will have developed not only your vocabulary for the natural world, but you will have an enhanced appreciation of how nature writing can help us explore and value that world.

What students need to bring

• Notepad and pen
• Walking boots/shoes
• Warm coat

Additional information

Please wear appropriate clothing/aprons for the workshop or studio, this includes stout covered footwear (no sandals or open toes).

Arrival day
Residential students can arrive from 4pm, non-residential students to arrive by 6.45pm for registration
6.45pm: Welcome, followed by dinner (included)
8 - 9pm: First teaching session, attendance is essential

Daily timetable
Course teaching 9.15am - 5pm (lunch included)
Dinner: from 6.30pm (included for residential students)
Evening working: students may have access to workshops until 9pm, but only with permission from the tutor and provided any health and safety guidelines are observed

Departure day
Course teaching: 9.15am - 3pm (lunch included)
Residential students will need to check out of rooms by 10am

Please note, the tutor may make slight variations to the daily timetable as required

Terms & Conditions