Where are we? 
Battersea Park. Timing is everything and my timing is not good. Just before the lockdown began my decorator neighbour started redecorating my flat in Streatham. I moved out to escape the smell of paint. I moved in with a friend who lives on the other side of the river (the smell was very strong!). I was once told that if you catch a mouse in a ‘humane’ mouse trap you need to release it on the other side of a river if you don’t want it making its way back. I am a mouse who doesn’t seem to have found its way back – yet. 

Read Rebecca's full conversation here... 

Where are we? 
In a storage closet in my parents’ house, which is on a hobby farm just outside of Kananaskis Country in Alberta, Canada. Prairies on one side, Rockies on the other. The perfect place to spend the summer-not so much the winter. My partner and I rushed back here from Dublin in March and I converted this closet into a mini office where I can get away from the noise of a house full of six people and two large dogs. Last week a skunk sprayed one of the dogs, and he ran into this part of the house and there is still the occasional whiff of skunk when it gets too warm. My grandmother is in an ensuite next door and I’m often lured out of my writing space by the smell of cooking. 

What are you working on? 
Right now I am editing a collection of poetry called A History of Touching, which will be published by Guernica Editions in 2022. I’m also revising a novel about a young woman with epilepsy who disappears from her small town, and picking at my dissertation; an examination of honey in the National Folklore Collection at UCD.  

What’s that over there? 
An abandoned wasp’s nest that my father found and gave to me. Books that I’m reading as research for the podcast I co-host.  

What’s that sound? 
There is a fox den just beyond our property line and they unleash otherworldly screams in the night. There is a mouse nesting in the wall and he is very noisy. There are coyotes off in the distance, frogs in the pond, and it is thunderstorm season, so there is wind, rain, thunder, and the dogs reacting to all of it!  

Time for a break…? 
I am trying to grow a flower garden for the first time but an invasive wildflower has become the bane of my existence. I persist, however, and there are some lovely little black flowers starting to bloom but I threw out all of the seed packets and don’t remember what I planted! I often take the dogs for long walks and listen to audiobooks, or pick wildflowers in the fields and say hello to the horses. Mostly I cook and bake; I like to work with my hands when I need a break. I also take enough baths that I’m quite likely 60% tadpole.  

Was there a particularly surprising moment during the Summer School?  
I was very nervous to be on video chat so much, but I was pleasantly surprised at how comfortable Nick and the other facilitators made everyone feel. The one-on-one sessions were particularly engaging and it was so exciting to be able to have so many poets workshop my poems.  

What's next for your writing? 
I’m hoping to finish a collection of short stories and a second poetry collection in addition to my MA thesis before the end of the year, but we’ll see if any of that comes to fruition!  

Where are we? 
In my studio apartment in Minneapolis. 

What are you working on? 
All sorts of meanderings. Just this second, I am reading a letter my daughter sent me for Father’s Day. She’s working on her penmanship and calling it “vintage”. There’s little squiggles on all four corners, hearts and blue clouds and green and blue hills. 

What’s that over there? 
That, my friend, is my mother’s 1952 Gibson, which I restored myself.  

What’s that sound? 
The television. It’s a studio apartment. 

Time for a break…?
Make coffee, go outside and smoke a cigarette. 

Was there a particularly enlightening moment during the Summer School?  
Working with Padraig Regan was especially meaningful for me. I was really able to unlock a poem I’ve been struggling with in that session. Something clicked.  

What's next for your writing? 
Whatever Peter Campion tells me to do, within reason.  

Seriously, I’m working on a book of poems for my MFA thesis. I think it’ll center around my daughter’s drawings that she sends along, but this seems to change from day to day.  

Where are we? 
Weald. It’s a small village in Kent.

What are you working on? 
For poetry I’m finalising the poems and sequence for my pamphlet The Human Bone Manual. Getting ready for submissions – that wait. 

What’s that over there? 
My German industrial 50s school desk complete with teen tippex from someone named Ingrid (I reckon that was done in the 80s though, don’t you?). Plenty of found feathers in my Nanna’s green decanter (all a bit Bat For Lashes circa 2006). 

Read Rachel's full conversation here...

Where are we? 
I draft most of my writing walking along or sitting at Ballyholme Bay and the adjoining dunes. I do my revisions in a chair in our bedroom looking out the window, or sometimes on a sofa in the living room 

What are you working on? 
I generally draft a few pieces a week lately, so often revising a few pieces at a time. I am considering working on a chapbook manuscript for the Fool for Poetry competition. 

Time for a break…?
I generally don’t take a break, usually do my writing late morning to early afternoon, and along with reading and walking, play music, learn Irish, watch mysteries (Foyle’s War right now). 

Was there a particularly memorable moment during the Summer School?   
The group sessions were very good, and the 1 to 1s were especially helpful. I have wondered at times if my poetic style is “over the hill”, so the validation was very helpful. Nick and Leontia’s feedback was very helpful along with the other staff. 

Now that the Summer School is over, what's next for your writing? 
I hope to do such a workshop again. I hope to arrange with a respected poet an overall feedback session, for the poets to read a fair sample of my work, 10-20 pages and give me general feedback of strengths or weaknesses. I have mainly published in Irish journals, and I am trying to identify Scottish, Welsh, and English journals that would be a good fit for my work.

I look forward to applying to the Summer School next year! I took an excellent real life workshop last year elsewhere, and the online course with the Seamus Heaney Centre was much closer to that quality than I had expected. Well done to all involved!

Where are we?  
In a corner of our kitchen in Edinburgh. This is where I type up on the computer or have Zoom/Teams calls. The danger is my husband coming in and asking if I’d like a cuppa - the man from Porlock, so I use our son’s former bedroom for concentrated writing where I am undisturbed and there is no wifi link to tempt me. This bedroom has become a junk room since our son left home. I’m far too ashamed to show you a photo of the piles of old chairs, towers of books and files on the floor and the tiny walk-way I squeeze through to get to my desk-space, an old table. I thought I would get to grips with it during lockdown but one day of it was so depressing I gave up. I kept thinking I could be writing a poem instead.

What are you working on?
I am editing/rewriting poems that were discussed in the Summer School workshops or in 1-1s. I am polishing poems that will go in my first collection ‘The Further North’ (working title), poems inspired by landscape, history, folklore and myth of Shetland, Orkney, St Kilda and Iceland. I also have a completely different second collection about half way there: ekphrastic poems, colour (as in paintings), and women reclaiming herstory or the male gaze. I usually work on several collections at once (like Monet, though mine are worked on over several months not in the same day.)

What’s that over there?
That is a Balanese shadow puppet, Tuban, a comedy character which I bought in Bali whilst researching wayang kulit (shadow puppetry) and sacred dance. Tuban’s jaw can be manipulated to open and shut.

What’s that sound?
It could be the fridge, my husband munching toast, or the cacophony of seagulls, and magpies from the garden. I don’t mind the pigeons and pretend their cooing is doves.

Time for a break…?
Sitting on the bench in the sun (if any) in my tiny garden with a cuppa or weeding (a meditative activity) - aware I’m so lucky to have this Hortus Conclusis. After lunch, I go for a walk in the nearby grounds of a former lunatic asylum, (appropriate as we all feel a little mad now). I used to wade through a lake of buttercups during lockdown but now sadly mown as council workers return. If gales (which we seem to have more of this summer) I might do Tai Chi or just dance around the kitchen open space to something inspiring. At the moment, it’s Jamie Callum or ‘María de Buenos Aires’, Piazzolla’s tango operetta. I used to go to Contemporary Dance classes at Dancebase in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh but since lockdown, the kitchen has had to do. I don’t write in the eves as that way lies insomnia. Instead we watch telly/Netflix/Google Play together - the brilliant  ‘My Brilliant Friend’ at the moment.

Was there a particularly striking moment during the Summer School?
Fellow students in the group workshop critiques were both incisive and uplifting and I was grateful for the time they must have spent preparing. I began to appreciate the qualities of a wide range of poetry styles but also to see that I should stop trying to write like other people but to write like myself  - I don’t mean stop reading and learning from others - and also how to push my own writing to be more arresting.

What's next for your writing?
I hope to get my first collection published. 

Where are we? 
Behind an electric lime door in a rickety old townhouse in London. It’s part of a housing co-op that’s been going since the early 80s. It used to be filled with punks and anarchists; now it’s occupied by a gaggle of middle-aged eccentrics. 

What are you working on? 
Some scripts for a client, and what I hope will be my first pamphlet.  

What’s that over there? 
Outside the window to the right of my desk? The house opposite? That’s where French poets Rimbaud and Verlaine lived in 1793 after scandalizing literary Paris with their drug and absinthe-fueled love affair. They wrote some of their most famous poems in that house (and attacked each other with knives). There’s a commemorative plaque on the wall, but it’s currently hidden by lockdown foliage.   

Read Iain's full conversation here...

Where are we?  
In my studio located in my back garden at home in Fenit, Co.Kerry. 

For over 25 years, I wrote and painted at various kitchen tables. I can write anywhere though and have missed writing in notebooks in cafes, people watching and drinking too much coffee. We decided to build a studio in 2018 and it has been the best investment, as I now have a designated space to write and create, though I’m still strangely drawn to my kitchen table. Our children come out to study and complete homework (so they say) and sometimes just to escape the madness indoors. It has huge windows and the light is terrific, even in the winter months. It looks out onto Tralee Bay and an old railway track covered in ivy and brambles. It’s such a tranquil space, sometimes I just come out to read/ listen to music or just sit in silence and stare out the window. 

Read Lorraine's full conversation here...

Where  are we? 
I’m in a shipping container sized house that I built in the countryside. I have a tiny studio/office, which is the ugliest part of the house, that I sometimes work in, but I often work in bed, on the sofa, in the living room or outdoors too! So, pretty much everywhere really. In the summer, I can open up one whole side of the house to the outside, increasing space, which is lovely.    

What are  you working on? 
I’m working on a few things, every day is different! I’m gathering poems for a pamphlet, researching for a philosophical sci-fi novel, and writing a populist philosophical critique of the Simulation Argument. I’ve also started composing a piece of music about the Earth breathing, probably for vocals, strings and recorded natural sounds. And I’ve been doing some matchbox art criticising our consumerist society by drawing Renaissance-style men. I actually want to start a Renaissance-style comic wall drawing but its story and images are overwhelming me slightly at the moment. 

What’s  that over there? 
It’s a little river where I noticed a stoat once! There’s lots of wildlife around. Regarding the photo of my studio, instead of my garden, I’m not sure what you mean, but the wobbly thing on the wall is a mirror that’s for practical rather than aesthetic reasons but I might bin it. To the right are certain little items – a painting by a friend of mine thanking me for composing a piece of music for one of her paintings, some Aborigine art, some Hindu art, and a framed heart-shaped piece of coral that I found on a research trip to Australia that’s around the size of my little fingernail.  
 
What’s  that sound? 
Birds, beautiful birds… whoever said the countryside was quiet? Sometimes I mimic the little owl at night and she gets slightly confused but then decides she’ll hoot along after all and we keep a little conversation going. 
 
Time for  a break…?
I try to find a balance between listening to how I’m feeling and disciplining how I’m feeling. So if I’m feeling particularly motivated about something, I do that rather than something else. But, sometimes I might have to egg myself on to finish what I’m working on before being rewarded with a loo break - they’re great to refocus and replan. Unless I’m really ‘in the zone’, I try to vary work and postures by doing some form of exercise in between activities, such as cycling, yoga or even 5 mins of boxing at the moment! 
 
Was  there a particularly striking moment  during the Summer School?
There were quite a few. I remember grinning from ear to ear, like my new hammock from tree to tree, when the week kicked off very well and people understood what my poems were about and didn’t hate them! It was comforting to hear that successful poets often feel like charlatans too, and it was wonderful that everyone had so many opinions, about pretty much everything. I loved the 1:1s as well as the group workshops; my favourite group workshop was the one discussing the First Collection Prize submissions.  

What's next for your writing? 
Be more confident, and thematically more purposeful about getting across my deeper views in clearer, more concrete, more reserved ways.