How to Leave a Body – Embodied Poetry Workshop Series

How to Leave a Body – a series of embodied poetry workshop sessions with Holly Winter-Hughes

Join Holly Winter-Hughes (How to Leave a Body, Verve) as she gently guides you through the process of using writing as a way to connect with ourselves and our embodied stories. Looking at poems that explore themes of embodiment, as well as tapping into our own somatic experiences to enrich our work.

Holly used poetry to reconnect with her body after years of dissociation and embodied trauma. She is passionate about bringing the stories held in our bodies to the light, finding fresh way to tell them to deepen personal and community connection.

In this celebration of our bodies and our stories, we’ll bring our somatic experiences into our work, for more visceral, sensuous and engaging writing. This series is all about connection, healing and community.

Each session will focus on autonomy and only going as deep as you wish in your own writing. You will be encouraged and supported in taking ownership of your words.

You are welcome to return each session to build on your embodied experiences, but each session will also welcome newcomers.

Sessions are bi-monthly and planned for 14th Jan, 11th March, 13th May, 8th July.

About Holly:

Holly Winter-Hughes is a poet, facilitator and researcher passionate about using writing to express the stories and silence held within our bodies. Her work explores embodiment, memory, trauma and resilience, drawing on her experiences and academic research to illuminate the unseen and unheard. Holly’s poetry has been commissioned by organisations including Apples & Snakes, Arvon and Poetry Pharmacy, and she has shared her work widely across the UK, performing for the BBC, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Satellite of Love and Raise the Bar.

A committed advocate for underrepresented voices, Holly is the founder and CEO of The Word Association CIC , which has published over 40 anthologies amplifying the work of marginalised communities under her leadership.

Holly’s writing is widely published in journals such as Atrium, Clarion, Impossible Archetype, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Lapidus Magazine and Tears in the Fence. Her collection, How to Leave a Body came out in May 2025 through Verve. It was selected as Atrium’s featured collection for Summer 2025. Holly is also an editor for Clarion Poetry Magazine.

In 2025, Holly achieved distinction in an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes from Metanoia Institute, her dissertation focused on practitioner wellbeing and resilience. She is a member of LAPIDUS, the professional body for Writing for Wellbeing. She is currently a doctoral student at the University of Birmingham, exploring how an embodied approach to therapeutic writing can amplify the silent and unspoken across individual, communal and spatial contexts. Holly will be presenting two papers at The International Society for Folk Narrative Research 2026 Nature in Narrative Conference in Reykjavík.

"Holly Winter-Hughes' visceral writing turns the human form inside-out, mapping the contours of trauma, abuse and hard-won resilience. It urges the reader to follow and 'Breathe deep to the creak of your heartwood'. Darkly imaginative and pearled with fresh phrase-making, these are poems that compel attention and linger."

John McCullough

“Holly's poetry leaves red shapes on my skin, and teeth marks. Unapologetically incandescent images twist tightly and then open into wide, revelatory spaces. The thin blade of a plastic-handled knife flashes in the dark of cold-roomed poems, but beside my shoulder as I read there is always an older, kinder spirit. It says, 'Look - this, yes, and this.' And yet, somehow, the spirit is still singing. I love this collection.”

Tom Hirons

“Holly writes with the whiplash of thunder.”

Antony Owen

“An electrifying poet with Plath-like power and potency. Such fire!”

Anna Saunders

www.hollywinterhughes.com