The (More Than) Human Voice - Workshop with Karen McCarthy Woolf & Falmouth Poetry Group
Fri 8 Aug 2025 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM Bills Attic, Krowji, TR15 3AJ
6pm - Reading at The Writers’ Block
Workshop will take place at Bill's Attic at Krowji, Redruth*. Krowji is a 20 minute walk, or a short drive from The Writers' Block. https://www.krowji.org.uk/bills-attic/ . The Reading at 6pm will take place at The Writers' Block at The Ladder, 2-4 Clinton Road, Redruth, TR15 2QE
Falmouth Poetry Group Presents 'The (More Than) Human Voice' a Workshop led by Karen McCarthy Woolf
How can we find new ways to tell stories through multiple voices -- whether they are flowers, trees, animals or dolls? In this intensive workshop, we will explore new ways of creating new poems and accessing multiple registers, through a mix of exercises, close reading and discussion. Perfect for writers at every stage, whether you're starting out or in the midst of a longer project that needs a push in new and unexpected directions.
Karen McCarthy Woolf’s Top Doll is an experimental, polyvocal verse novel inspired by the life of reclusive American multimillionaire Huguette Clarke who died in New York age 104. Clarke was a hermit who spent her life surrounded by her vast collection of dolls. Dolls embody our desires, they live in miniature worlds that allow us to exercise complete control over a narrative that may be very different from our reality. They are passive, compliant, escapist and inert; but paradoxically intensely alive, at least in the realm of the imagination. We tell them our secrets, our dreams.
Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf FRSL is the author of three poetry books and the editor of numerous literary anthologies, the latest of which is Nature Matters: Vital Poems of the Global Majority (Faber, 2025), co-curated with Mona Arshi. As a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar at UCLA, Karen was writer in residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights. Her polyvocal verse novel Top Doll was shortlisted for the TS Eliot and Jhalak Prizes and she is the winner of the 2025 Jerwood Prize for Poetry, England.
Falmouth Poetry Group was founded in 1972 by Penelope Shuttle and the late Peter Redgrove, originally meeting in Peter's room at what was then the Falmouth College of Art on Wood Lane. It meets fortnightly for critical workshops, and acts as a discussion forum for work-in-progress. We still follow the workshop method used by The Group founded by Philip Hobsbaum, of which Redgrove was a founder member. FPG id an open-door group, and acts as a dynamic and influential source of inspiration and encouragement to poets in Cornwall, and has an excellent record of achievement.
https://writersmosaic.org.uk/people/karen-mccarthy-woolf/
Karen McCarthy Woolf and Falmouth Poetry Group will be doing a reading at The Writers' Block at 6pm. Book Tickets HERE.
*Please note, Bill's Attic is not a accessible venue, as it is upstairs. Any questions please email grace@thewritersblock.org.uk
Coming to both the workshop and the reading? Why not enjoy a stroll through Redruth, or a drink and bite to eat at The Buttermarket or Beats and Roots at The Ladder in-between. The Writers' Block will be open from 5.30pm.
Location
Bills Attic, Krowji, TR15 3AJ