Wednesday 19th October 2022 – 6pm to 8pm

Thanks so much to everyone who came to this experimental workshop and brought such positive energy that I had to bin most of my plan for the evening. I hadn’t expected you’d all be so keen to write that I couldn’t stop you. And then leaping up to read aloud the work you’d just written…it was incredible to see.

We drew inspiration from nature, ecology, landscape, myth, folklore and the surreal/irreal to play around with prose, poetry, and experimental and hybrid forms.

On the night we heard about: instructions for witches on how to find reliable food sources (at creative writing workshops apparently); posh fairies with blue hair negotiating over a change in land use after a divorce; the dilemma of taking your dragon to school when everyone else has a standard anteater; a journey with a bee through honeycomb that opened up into the universe; a fluid, shapeshifting non-ordinary reality with an owl, a toad and a stormtrooper; the scratchy thrill of a lamb sleeping on a bed of scorpions and other dark creatures; autumn leaves as millions of tiny deaths that cycle back round to produce life; a companion piece about the autumn walk to the workshop that led us outwards to the cosmic; a spoken word piece about finding your place with the sea; exotic birds celebrating the eradication of humans; a found poem about how to write a novel, inspired by the octopus mind; and several more still in the works, which I’ll add once they’ve been revealed.

I can’t even begin to imagine what we’ll hear about at Becoming & Dissolving on 30th November…

““Gayle created a superbly organized, well-structured event and attracted a wonderful range of talented young, and a few not-so-young, writers. All that – and a relaxed atmosphere in a perfect setting. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and it was obvious that everyone else did too. What was particularly impressive was the quality of the work produced and the alacrity with which participants volunteered to stand up and read. Gayle created the conditions for this to happen.””

— Brenda

““I really enjoyed the ‘Reaching Beyond the Human’ workshop, it took me out of my comfort zone, and was incredibly inspiring and I loved all the stories shared! The prompts were amazing too, I really got in a zone.””

— Sophie, art student

““The workshop was excellent. Thank you again for hosting such a welcoming space. I really liked the template that I picked up, modelling how to write about an object in detail. It seems like a great way to exercise your descriptive muscles - certainly something I could use more practice with! The variety of choices of prompts and items to be inspired by was great too.””

— Lauren

Transformative Nature

Creative Writing Workshop

Tuesday 21st March 2023, 6pm to 8pm… Ah, it’s over, sorry!

Foodstory, Thistle Street, Aberdeen

Please book in advance

For adults – Complete beginners to seasoned writers very welcome

If you’d like to book, please email me on gayle@gayleburgoyne.com, or fill in the Contact form. Thank you!

More details

Aberdeen – January to March 2023

Workshops currently in the workshop:

Time is a River Without Banks
Completed – 25th January 2023, 6pm to 8pm