Read With Confidence with Emma Clohessy

Course Summary

Wanting the skill to read your own written words with confidence in front of an audience?  Are you getting your work published in journals and magazines but shy to read at an open-mic session?  Have you just published a collection and need to learn how to do your readings to the best of your ability?  This course will allow you to join as one modest when speaking in front of many listeners but finish feeling confident and at ease reading your short story, poems or paragraphs from your novel to large audiences.

This course focuses on reading or performing ones written words in any genre.  Participants will be invited to practise their new skills learnt using samples of their own writing.

Course Outline

Week One:      Public Speaking

• Personality V’s Charactery – What an audience sees & hears, changes within first minute.
• Organs of Speech
• Vocal & Memory Warm Ups

Week Two:      The Science of Breathing

• To project the voice using – Intercostal Diaphragmatic Method.

Week Three:    Relaxation

• Teaching you how to release tension before reading.
• Piecing 3 weeks together.

Week Four:     Phrasing

• Learn techniques to hold your audience’s attention.

Week Five:      Being Articulate

• With your writing, put into practise what we have learnt.
• Summary of course to date to allow – crisp voice & clarity in diction.

Week Six:        Perform

• At ease with your audience
• Use body language
• Knowing how to emphasise and with fluency, learn now to read your short story, poem or novel allowing your audience feel like you are talking to them. Pooling all your course together.

Course Outcomes

With knowledge shared & tricks to put participants at ease reading to audiences, all group will be confident to read their written words in public.

Letting the typed words of any genre assist one to ‘Talk to their audience’.

Emma Clohessy’s debut collection ‘Poems, Lost & Found’ (Revival Press 2025), has been nominated for Seamus Heaney, Pigott and The Forward Prizes. Published in many Irish, UK, US journals and over a half-a-dozen anthologies – ‘Doors’ The Writers Journal New York, the most recent this year. Having been introduced to Creative Writing by UCC, she’s read her poetry all over Ireland, at festivals and local radio stations.

Emma, ALCM(TD) in Drama & Communication with the University of West London – facilitates workshops for authors of any genre, wishing to improve reading and performance skills in public.

Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email bookings@irishwriterscentre.ie.