Description
Waiting for the last bus or embarking on adventure?
How do we experience ageing as women? As the years pass and there’s more past than future, how do we live well in the present? How do we befriend and care for our ageing bodies, with their aches and pains, severe or lesser limitations? How do we live with increasing loss, including multiple bereavements as well as the daily losses of glasses, keys, what it was we came upstairs/into the bedroom for, names of people we know perfectly well? And how do we think about our own deaths (if we do)? What images, memories, resources, objects, songs and stories give us hope and bring laughter? And where and who is God/G*d/Godde in the midst and muddle of it all?
These are just some of the questions we will be pondering through the lens of contemporary women’s poetry. Poets selected will probably include Maya Angelou, Ruth Bidgood, Lucille Clifton, Helen Dunmore, Diana Hendry, Frances Horovitz, Elizabeth Jennings, Audre Lorde, Mary Oliver, Kathleen Raine and others, including some of Nicola’s own poems. As well as close readings of poems, there will be a writing workshop, a relaxed Saturday evening party with circle dance, and a closing time of simple, shared ritual.
This is an event for women only. It will be led by Professor Nicola Slee, a long-time Friend of Holland House, poet and theologian who has taught feminist theology and poetry for over three decades and is herself facing the challenges of ageing.
Arrivals from 4pm on Friday and includes all meals, refreshments and accommodation
If you wish to secure your place with a deposit, balance due 6 weeks before, please follow this link