More about Travel and Nature Writing

In recent years, the travel and nature writing genres have increasingly merged into one. This course will explore them as two sides of one question: how do we capture the world on the page and how can we turn our wanderings into prose? You don’t have to have undertaken expeditions to faraway lands – both travel and nature writing can be inspired by a walk in rural woods or through a city’s edgelands.

The course will involve tuition and guidance, solo writing exercises, working with partners, discussion and feedback, as well as outside exercises to help you tune into place and guage your relationship to it. You will hone the skills of deep listening, field-sensing (very slow walking) and ‘horizon-lining’ techniques to help enhance your perception, and bring your observations back inside to develop into writing.

We will also examine some of the ethical issues facing travel and nature writers in an age of climate breakdown and ecological unravelling. What is a writer’s role in these times? Are we bearing witness or trying to bring about change? How do we write honestly about a shifting world?

Over the course of the five days, you will be working towards the first draft of a short piece of writing that has been fed by the teaching and the exercises you’ve done. Along the way will be workshop sessions and one-to-one tutorials involving constructive feedback to help polish your prose. Suitable both for beginners and for more experienced writers wanting to explore new ways of approaching and contextualising their writing.