Imagining a Child: Strengthening Your Poetry with Real and Imagined Memories with Jenny Mitchell

Course Summary:

Childhood can be filled with stories, playfulness and the sort of darkness it can be hard to face, even as an adult. How can we use what we remember or imagine to feed our poetry? Over a period of eight, non-judgemental weeks, participants will be offered creative prompts that allow them to write about childhood/children in playful and profound ways. Is it possible to reveal and ‘conceal’ our childhood selves in a way that keeps us safe, but also feeds our work? If we don’t do this, might we lose access to our most fertile source? What journeys can childhood help us and the reader go on?

Course Outline:

Week 1: Looking Back

In this first session, we’ll explore how we can use childhood stories to inspire our work.

Week 2: Childhood Places

What specific places formed the real or imagined children we write about?

Week 3: Fully formed

What are some of the adult traits children might show early on? How do we describe wise children and what do they offer us?

Week 4: Parental guidance

How do parents help form a child’s world view?

Week 5: Forming New Bonds

What friends, neighbours or teachers can we write about to show us new things about childhood?

Week 6: Magic Child

Are all children special? How do we write convincingly about the ones who had great power but might not have been invisible on some level? Can our poetry reclaim a space for them?

Week 7: Children Rule, Ok?

Imagine a world where children are in charge? Would the world be any better?

Week 8. Family Circle

In the final class we’ll celebrate work created during the course, and plan ways forward.

Course Outcomes:

The aim of the course is to encourage participants to write fearlessly about childhood, whether this is real or imagined, in order to release new creative energy. As well as using real stories, participants will engage with, and take inspiration from, several exemplary poems about childhood by established poets. Participants will be encouraged to draft at least one new poem a week based on the theme of each session. There will be no pressure to share work, although this will be encouraged as a way to give power to the voice. Participants 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.

If this course is booked out below please contact bookings@irishwriterscentre.ie to be added to the waiting list