Manchester Cathedral’s new Writer-in-Residence Tom Branfoot has created a brand new project at Volition. 

Tom says:- During the six-week poetry workshop series with Volition, we looked at themes surrounding voice and poetry. Namely: rage, masking and persona, poetry in the city, imagery and point-of-view. The workshop sessions worked in such a way to address the foundational elements of reading and writing poetry, while looking at specific themes. I was really glad to have introduced them to work by W. G. Sebald, Eve Esfandiari-Denney, Sean Bonney and many other diverse poets. As a small cohort, we worked well over the six-weeks and developed skills such as public speaking, inventive use of metaphor and simile, and different approaches to writing autobiographically.

The workshop series was brought to a conclusion by a reading event in the beautiful Cathedral Library, where students brought friends and family to hear them perform poetry written during the sessions. Each student was presented with a certificate to congratulate their effort and completion of the course.

The poetry workshops were an exciting new offer for Volition and were really enjoyed by all those that attended.