Family as Metaphor: Strengthening Your Poetry with Real & Imagined Memories with Jenny Mitchell
Info
Date: May 6, 2026
Time: 6.30 - 8.30pm
Duration: 8 weeks
Level: Advanced | Intermediate | Beginner |
Cost: €250 (€225 Members)
This course will take place online on Wednesdays for 8 weeks from 6 May.
Course Summary:
Families and childhood carers fill us with stories/beliefs/ways of behaving that help shape who we become. How can we use what we’ve been given to feed our poetry? Over a period of eight, non-judgemental weeks, participants will be offered creative prompts that allow them to write about family and its legacies. Is it possible to reveal and ‘conceal’ real people in our poems whilst respecting their boundaries? How can these be pushed against; and is poetry the best way to tap into transgenerational transmissions? Where can poems about family lead us, and how can we make that journey safely?
Course Outline:
Week 1: Family as an Open Road
In this first session, we’ll explore how we can use family stories to inspire us.
Week 2: The Place That Made Them
What specific places formed the real or imagined families we write about?
Week 3: History Made Them
How do certain historical moments help to illuminate family stories?
Week 4: The Words to Say It
What are we allowed to say about family, and what is prohibited?
Week 5: The Missing Aunt
How do we write the secrets we were never told?
Week 6: What Needs to be Healed?
Can we use poetry to examine ideas of loss and longing within the family dynamic?
Week 7: The Child’s Eye View
Where do we put our childhood imagination when it comes to writing poems?
Week 8. Family Circle
In the final class we’ll aim to offer new stories to the real or imagined family; and celebrate work created during the course.
Course Outcomes:
The aim of the course is to encourage participants to write fearlessly about real and imagined families in order to release new creative energy. As well as using real stories they’ll be offered ways to seek poetic inspiration from a wide range of sources. They will also engage with and take inspiration from several exemplary poems about family by established poets. Participants will be encouraged to draft at least one new poem a week based on the theme of each session. They will also provide and receive constructive criticism through the weekly practice of workshopping each other’s poetry.
Jenny Mitchell has three poetry collections: Her Lost Language was joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize; Map of a Plantation won the Poetry Book Awards and is a university set text; Resurrection of a Black Man contains three prize-winning poems. She’s won numerous competitions, and was the inaugural Poet-in-the-Community for Cork City Libraries in 2025. She’s a poetry co-editor for the Morning Star and a facilitator for the Irish Writer’s Centre. She edited the anthology Everyone Started Singing in 2026, and also received an Author’s Foundation Grant from the Society of Authors, along with an Arthur Welton Award.
