Our tutors have been selected with the aid of Poetry Ireland and the Writers Centre in Dublin to assure the highest standard of teaching and the quality of the course content.

CREATIVE WRITING WITH KATIE DONOVAN

WANNA WRITE?
This weekend course is intended for those who wish to develop their interest in writing.

MEMOIR, POETRY, FICTION
I will encourage you to try out the genres of memoir, poetry and fiction to see which most suits your talents and interests. Your writing will be discussed by the group to help you to get closer to the exact form and style you wish for.

ON-GOING WORK
If you are already engrossed in an ongoing project, like a novel or a collection of poems, the workshop environment will support and fine tune the process.

GET OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE
I find that travelling outside my familiar comfort zone to an entirely new and exotic location provides welcome stimulation for new writing as well as a fresh perspective on work that needs polishing. I imagine the same will apply to you!

TALKS, GAMES, MEDITATIONS
In addition to the inspiration provided by our exceptional surroundings I will be using pep talks, games, meditations and guiding notes and anecdotes to inveigle you into surprising yourself.

LAUGH & LEARN
We will also give a reading of our work on the final day of the workshop. I look forward to the variety, laughter and uplift that working together will provide us all.


WHO IS KATIE DONOVAN?

Katie Donovan has published three collections of poetry, all with Bloodaxe Books: Watermelon Man (1993), Entering the Mare (1997) and Day of the Dead (2002).

Born in 1962, Katie Donovan grew up on a farm in Co Wexford, moving to Dun Laoghaire (a suburb of Dublin) at the age of 9. She was educated at New Park Comprehensive School; Trinity College Dublin; and the University of California at Berkeley. She lived in Hungary for a year where she taught English. She then worked as a journalist with "The Irish Times" for 13 years. When her two children were born she left journalism and qualified as an Amatsu practitioner, a form of Japanese osteopathy. She is currently Writer-in-Residence for Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown, her local borough. This involves teaching creative writing at the Institute of Art Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire as well as organising a variety of literary events.

Katie Donovan has contributed poetry and literary essays to a number of anthologies and literary journals, including: Staying Alive, edited by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe, 2003); The New Irish Poets, edited by Selina Guinness, (Bloodaxe 2004); The White Page/An Bhileog Bhan: Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets, edited by Joan McBreen (Salmon, 1999); "The Southern Review", "The Seneca Review", "The Recorder", "Verse", "Poetry Ireland Review", "The SHOp" and "Force 10".

She is a frequent broadcaster on radio, reading her poetry as well as discussing the arts on RTE 1, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3, and BBC Northern Ireland.
She has read her work widely in Ireland, the UK and the US, at venues from Yale University, US, to the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin, the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival, UK, the Cuirt Festival in Galway and the Dublin Writers Festival; Georgetown University, US and the Brighton Irish Festival (UK).

She has co-edited two literary anthologies:
Ireland's Women: Writings Past and Present, with A. Norman Jeffares and Brendan Kennelly (Kyle Cathie, UK and Gill and McMillan, Ireland, 1994; Norton and Norton, US, 1996)
Dublines, an anthology of writings about Dublin, with Brendan Kennelly (Bloodaxe, 1995)
She is the author of a pamphlet in the Letters to the New Island Series, Irish Women Writers: Marginalised by Whom? (Raven, 1988; 1991).

Her short fiction has appeared in "The Sunday Tribune" and "Cork Literary Review". She is a former board member of Poetry Ireland. She is the recipient of numerous awards from the Arts Council of Ireland.


Coral

I buy you coral:
white, floral,
the one lure
in the giftshop
that shines pure.

Why did the coral
call me to its shelf?
It is all I want to be:
beautiful, unspoilt,
itself.

There's more:
its harsh pores - that sing
when your fingers lightly play -
suggest the hidden thing in me
that will not bend,
that cuts you
if you press too close,

and if it's rattled,
breaks in jagged brittles,
waiting to needle you
in the dark.


By Katie Donovan (from Day of the Dead )