Event description

From Seeds to Streets: Creative Writing about Local Places

Gardens are restorative and fertile places for writers. They are vital, dynamic and can teach us about life’s cycles. They are spaces of mystery and uncertainty where things change, emerge or stir under the surface beyond our control or understanding. The NECCHi Wayi garden sprawls out into a suburban landscape with an interesting history, which adds layers of sensory experiences and stories to this special place.

Come enjoy some slow time paying attention and writing with me in the beautiful Wayi Garden at NECCHi, Newlands. We will engage in meditative writing practices in the garden, write creative pieces in response to a range of exercises and prompts, and read and discuss evocative pieces of writing about gardens and the suburbs. We will also deepen our understanding of the Wayi Garden and the Newlands area. Depending on participants’ interest and capacity, some sessions may involve short walks from the garden into the suburban streets around it.

You can write in any genre or form you like in these workshops. You do not need to have writing experience or a regular writing practice to participate. While there will be opportunities to share your writing and thoughts with the group if you want to and feel comfortable, there will be no expectation to do so – it’s completely fine if you prefer not to share your writing! The focus of these workshops will be on nurturing our attention, responsiveness to the world around us, and creativity.

About Simone

Simone King (she/her) is a poet, editor and PhD student in creative writing who lives and writes on Wurundjeri Country. Simone’s poems and reviews have been published in poetry anthologies and journals including Best of Australian Poems 2022, Australian Poetry Anthology 2024, Rabbit Poetry, Cordite, Plumwood Mountain, and Mascara Literary Review’s Resilience Anthology. Simone won the 2022 Blake Poetry Prize and the 2021 Woorilla Poetry Prize and has been highly commended for other literary awards. She coedited What we Carry: Poetry on Childbearing, Recent Work Press, 2021.

From Seeds to Streets is a family-friendly workshop that will take place within NECCHi's Wayi Community Garden. In the case of wet weather, the workshop will be held in a shared space inside the NECCHi Newlands House.