Ways of Writing Ourselves

Have you a desire to write but don’t know how or where to start? Or do you simply want to explore your creativity through writing?

This 8-week Creative Writing course plays with your imagination and dreams to free your inner wisdom and release your creativity. Throughout the term, you will explore poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, to discover myriad ways of claiming your voice and enjoying your gifts.

You will challenge your fears – of the blank page, of feeling foolish, of failure – and devote yourself to developing your powers to bring ideas and images to life.

By charming your inner critic, you will learn to write with courage and trust to persist with creative enchantment into our so-called real lives.

About the tutor

Mary Montague is a poet and nature writer. She is a biologist by background, with a PhD in ornithology. A love of the natural world informs much of her writing. Her poetry collections are Tribe (Dedalus 2008) and Black Wolf on a White Plain(Summer Palace 2001). She has been published in numerous journals, nationally and internationally, has been widely anthologised, most recently in Queering the Green (Lifeboat Press 2021). Her work has also been translated into French, Italian and Russian.

Mary is a qualified teacher with many years experience of teaching in schools, as well as extensive experience in facilitating and tutoring creative writing and poetry in a variety of settings. She also works as a Queen's University tutor delivering courses on birds and on evolutionary theory. She has received a number of grants from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and was a 2019 recipient of a Poetry Ireland Tyrone Guthrie Centre Mid-career Bursary. Her recently completed novel is under consideration by publishers. She contributes to The Guardian’s Country Diary. 

More details of Mary’s background and work can be found at: Mary-Montague.com