Sidestepping the I: Writing What You Don’t Know with Molly Twomey
Info
Date: May 12, 2026
Time: 6.30 - 8.30pm
Duration: 8 weeks
Level: Advanced | Intermediate | Beginner |
Cost: €250 (€225 Members)
This course will take place online on Tuesdays for 8 weeks from May 12.
Course Summary:
Are you tired of writing about your past? Do you find your backstory inescapable?
Join Molly Twomey for this 8-week poetry workshop where writers will intentionally sidestep the ‘I’ in favour of your imagination. While our work is inevitably shaped by experience, this course challenges writers to circumvent the personal and dive into the realm of the unknown.
Each weekly prompt and set reading is designed to encourage writers to expand their focus, transforming the ‘I’ into a more observant and externally focused ‘eye’. Expect to write through the perspective of an inanimate object, to be challenged to learn a new skill or about a new phenomenon, specifically to write about it.
Participants will share their work and provide peer-led feedback in a welcoming and encouraging space designed to reawaken your curiosity and imagination. It’s Molly’s hope to transform the idea of where a poem can come from.
Course Outline:
Week 1: Writing what we don’t know: curiosity and how to let it spill onto the page.
Week 2: Digging for sources: the library as a space for wonder and inspiration.
Week 3: Persona 1: Making mythology contemporary.
Week 4: Magical realism: letting what’s real grow wings.
Week 5: Ekphrasis: entering the art that moves us.
Week 6: Persona 2: bringing life to inanimate objects.
Week 7: Experiencing the brand new: mindful writing.
Week 8: Final readings.
Course Outcomes:
By the end of 8 weeks, you will:
- Have a selection of new poems to edit and develop with my advice and the advice of your peers.
- Have expanded your idea of where inspiration for a poem may be found.
- Have discovered new poets you may not have heard of before.
- Grown confidence in adapting a new persona and the courage to ‘lose your voice’.
- Grown confidence in your ability to write imaginatively.
- Gained a community of poets to share work with into the future.
Molly Twomey grew up in Lismore, County Waterford, and now lives in Cork. She published two poetry collections with the Gallery Press: Raised Among Vultures (2022) and Chic to be Sad (2025), supported by literature bursaries from the Arts Council. Her debut collection won the Southword Debut Collection Poetry Award and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. She holds an MA in Creative Writing and is a PhD Excellence Scholar at University College Cork.
