Sounds of Southampton

In this workshop we will be inspired by sound. The top five languages spoken in Southampton are Polish, Punjabi, Urdu, Pashto and Bengali. We will listen to a selection of poems in some of these languages, and discuss sound, rhythm and meaning.

Incorporating Emily Peasgood's exhibition When I Grow Up I Want to be a Ship, we will try to create a piece of work that will include music and words exploring the meaning of 'Home' - How is Southampton home for you?

Our first GHT workshop will explore 'Sound'. We will visit Emily Peasgood exhibition, When I Grow Up I Want To Be A Ship, and listen to the folk song that she has written for GHT. We will also listen to folk songs from other cultures, find the rhythm, meaning and history behind these tunes and create verses to be added to Emily's folk song. We will have the opportunity to listen, discuss, write and sing.

These workshops are free and open to all levels from those who have never tried creative writing to self published authors and everything in between. This is the first of a series of creative writing workshops which will explore and respond to our visual art programme at God's House Tower.

Susmita Bhattacharya

Susmita Bhattacharya is an Indian-born writer and writing facilitator. She won the Winchester Writers’ Festival Memoir Prize in 2016 and her novel, The Normal State of Mind (Parthian/Bee Books) was longlisted for the Words to Screen Prize at the Mumbai Association of Moving Images (MAMI) festival in India.

She has been shortlisted for, and won, numerous prizes and awards and her work has been commissioned by magazines and for BBC Radio 4. Her most recent collection of short stories, Table Manners, was published by Dahlia Books (2018). It won the Saboteur Short Story Collection Prize in 2019, was finalist for the DLF Hall & Woodhouse Literary Prize and was serialised on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

She teaches at Winchester University, leads the ACE funded ArtfulScribe Mayflower Young Writers workshops, and was a mentor for the Middle Way Mentoring project. She was writer-in-residence for The Word Factory, London in 2021.

*Please note that these sessions will be taking place at God's House Tower.

GHT Creative Writing Group #1