In this workshop, Sue will explore with participants what ‘home’ means and how migration, displacement and exile can affect a sense of home. You will read and discuss poems, respond to writing prompts (writing poetry or prose), drawing on your own experience or that of others, whether past or present. There will be the opportunity to share your draft writing but this is optional. Please bring a photograph and small object which you think might help stimulate your writing.

Sue Wallace-Shaddad was born and brought up in Suffolk but then travelled widely in her forty-year international career with the British Council, living in five countries. She is married to a Sudanese academic. Her first pamphlet, A City Waking Up, was about family life and traditions in Sudan. The second pamphlet, Sleeping Under Clouds, was a collaboration with Suffolk artist Sula Rubens responding to Sula’s paintings of refugee journeys. Her most recent pamphlet, Once There Was Colour, is about the impact of the crisis in Sudan on her family. Sue is widely published, runs workshops, writes poetry reviews and blogs for the Charles Causley Trust. She has family in Cornwall and visits often. She will help run some events at the Launceston Poetry Festival 30 May – 1st June 2025. https://suewallaceshaddad.wordpress.com