Shetland poetry workshop with Jen Hadfield

Standing Stone

maybe a compass

maybe a gnomon

maybe a signpost

for bee-eaters, swifts

Short poems can be like a meditation: helping us focus on where we're at right now, and on what's going on around us. They also make good Christmas cards!

We'll spend the afternoon reading, listening, looking and playing with words in a focussed but informal atmosphere. New and more confident poets all welcome. Bring outdoor gear for optional landscape writing.

2-5.30, Saturday 5th December

venue t.b.c (probably Burra)

16-yrs and up, 12 max.

£20 for the afternoon

jenhadfield@btinternet.com

This is what is in the ocean 15/11/15

Tonnes of bladderwrack washed up onto my local beach after Storm Abigail, full of smithereened plastic. In 40mph winds, I struggled along to another beach to watch the waves. I found the carcass of a young swan, a seal, and an unidentified marine mammal, perhaps a porpoise. Its skin was flensed away, and the blubber beneath was a mosaic of little chips of broken plastic. It's almost impossible to get your head around how much of this stuff is out there, chugging around the gyres like a great oceanic washing machine. We've got to sort this.