Gwyneth Lewis was Wales’s first National Poet, appointed in 2005, and wrote the bilingual six-foot-high inscription on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre, now an iconic symbol of Wales. Brought up Welsh-speaking in Cardiff, she studied English before becoming a Harkness Fellow in the United States, studying writing at Harvard and Columbia Universities. After completing a doctorate at Oxford, she worked as a BBC television producer before becoming a freelance writer. Her tenth poetry collection, First Rain in Paradise, was published in 2025 by Bloodaxe Books. Her writing has won the Wales Book of the Year Award in both Welsh and English, the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors for a distinguished body of work. Her memoir, Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling (Calon, 2024), won the Wales Book of the Year Award 2025 for Non-fiction. She was awarded an MBE for services to literature and mental health in 2022 and teaches writing internationally.
Poetry and Well-being
Writing is not therapy – but it can be therapeutic. This course will show you how to approach writing in a way which supports your well-being – offering connection, understanding, expression, exploration, and enjoyment, whilst negotiating the hazards of the demands of form and the exposure involved in this semi-public act of communication.
Using a combination of reading and writing exercises, alongside connection with the landscape and with each other, we’ll consider how to say what we really mean when we’re exploring complex issues and writing towards and away from pain. We’ll consider safeguarding in writing; how to negotiate the hazards of fear and discomfort; how to protect ourselves against exhaustion, judgement and self-criticism.
Tutors Clare Shaw and Gwyneth Lewis will use their experience of writing about love, failure, pain and endurance to guide you. Gwyneth will be happy to read work submitted in Welsh.
Bursaries
One £250 bursary space is available for this course. To apply, please complete this application form
Deadline for applications: Wednesday 20 August 2025
For further information about the support available, please visit our Financial Assistance page: https://tynewydd.wales/courses-retreats/financial-support/
Tutors
Gwyneth Lewis
Clare Shaw
Clare Shaw (they/them) has four poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books; their fifth collection I Saw What I Know(Bloodaxe Books) will be published in 2027. Clare also writes creative non-fiction, collaborates on several popular substacks, and was the co-editor of Little Toller’s acclaimed anthology The Book of Bogs (2025). With a background in mental health and education, Clare is a keen advocate for writing as a powerful means of social, ecological and personal change. Clare is a tutor, mentor and lecturer for organisations including Wordsworth Grasmere, The Royal Literary Fund, The Writing School and The Poetry Business. In their writing, teaching and activism, their work often engages with the intersections of ecology, wellbeing and social justice.
Guest Reader
Abeer Ameer (Digital)
Abeer Ameer’s poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies including Acumen, Poetry Wales, Planet, Atrium, Magma, The Rialto, New Welsh Review, The Poetry Review and Long Poem Magazine. She is a recipient of the Literature Wales Mentoring Scheme for 2020.Her debut poetry collection, Inhale/Exile, in which she shares stories from her Iraqi heritage, was published by Seren Books in February 2021. Inhale/Exile was selected to the Wales Literature Exchange Bookcase for 2021 and was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year in 2022.