BACKLIT and the University of Nottingham, Creative Writing course are pleased to be delivering an Ecopoetry Programme, to an invited group of young people that are associated with BACKLIT’s youth collective, Pending.

This partnership was developed through related conversations about the cross disciplinary work with visual arts and creative writing. This is an area that BACKLIT has explored previously with the REMARK programme, which provided a series of workshops with Art Review to develop critical arts writing (https://theremark.co.uk/About).

The Ecopoetry Programme consists of a series of 5 creative writing workshops (October – March 2024). We are inviting participants to produce ecopoems of their own, supported by exciting guest poets including Maria Sledmere, Samantha Walton, Panya Banjoko, Vicky Sparrow, Natasha Ruwona, Katy Lewis Hood, and Bethany Mitchell. We will also be joined for one of the sessions by staff from the Environment Agency, who give us insights into some of the environmental work they are doing here in Nottingham. The programme has been developed by Lila Matsumoto (poet and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham), with support from Suzanne Golden (Co Director, BACKLIT).

The workshops are intended to introduce participants to ecopoetry, which is a term to describe poems that addresses in some way the current environmental crisis. Through the workshops, we hope to help participants gain skills to reflect, in their poems, the connection between the personal, local, and global, and the relationship between creative writing, mental health, and environmental justice.

During this time, BACKLIT will share progress of the workshops on this section of www.backlit.org.uk and via socials.

Please do follow our socials and check on our website for monthly updates and progress on the programme.