SCROLL DOWN FOR YOUR FREE POEM OFFERING FROM WILLIAM AYOT:
"A POEM THAT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF"
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CREATIVE WRITING IN THE THERAPEUTIC ENCOUNTER
2 Day Workshop
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DON'T MISS YOUR CHANCE FOR THE BEST PRICE ON THIS LEADING COURSE!
Tuesday 2nd & Wednesday 3rd September 2025
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Dates : Tuesday 2nd & Wednesday 3rd September 2025 (2 Day Workshop)
Times : 9.30am – 4.30pm both days (BST)
Alternative Dates and Timings: Please click links as timings may vary Tuesday 21st and Wednesday April 22nd 2026
Location : Online
TRAINER : Claire Williamson (MA, SFHEA) Scroll down to see more about the trainer
Cost : £155 if booked by 2nd July 2025
£175 if booked by 2nd August 2025
£195 full price
We now offer insurance against cancellation. This must be purchased within 48 hours of booking the workshop. Click here for more info
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This experiential 2-day course focuses on creative writing and its use within therapy, therapeutic settings and self-supervision.
Therapists often work with client’s writing, or encourage clients to create within, or between, sessions. Some therapists have trained to be ‘poetry therapists’ and divide sessions between writing and discussion of the text, accelerating the process, or evincing new strands to the therapeutic work.
There is a risk to introducing writing, as it is revealing and sometimes walks the line between vulnerability and healing; there can be concerns about ‘quality’, which therapists can allay with a good understanding of creative writing as both a magnifying and softening tool, to say the ‘unsayable’, or to understand experience in a more tangible form.
Some counsellors and psychotherapists use creative writing as part of their own reflective practice to understand transferential relationships, create boundaries between sessions, and for personal and professional development.
Through experiential practice, this workshop will explore some helpful techniques and raise confidence in using the written (and spoken) word.
The workshop will focus on a range of applications, including:
- Supporting client metaphors
- Concrete and abstract images into words – poetry as resource
- Narratives and counter-narratives
- Reflective practice – employing form for clients and self-supervision
- Autobiographical fiction
- Applications and limitations
An empathic, relational approach will be experienced first hand as the process of the training is trauma-informed.
CLAIRE WILLIAMSON
Claire brings an integrative approach to using creative writing in the therapeutic encounter. She’s the former Director of Studies for Metanoia Institute’s MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes (CWTP), with over 20 years experience in the field of CWTP, including work in bereavement, mental health, addiction recovery, self-injury, cancer care, plus many educational and artistic settings.
Claire has facilitated training for counsellors at City of Bristol College’s FD in Counselling and UWE’s Diploma in Counselling. She also works with medical students at University of Bristol and Queen Mary University in London, exploring how creativity can support people within healthcare settings.
She’s a Senior Fellow of the higher education academy, with a Masters degree in Literary Studies (exploring the life sustaining effects of writing) and studying at Cardiff University for a PhD in Creative Writing (Writing the 21st century grief novel), with a Counselling Skills qualification (UWE).
Claire is the author of four poetry/narrative books, Visiting the Minotaur (Seren, 2018) Split Ends (Eyewear, 2016), The Soulwater Pool (2008) and Ride On (PoTA, 2005).
WHO THIS WORKSHOP IS DESIGNED FOR : Counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches and health workers are welcome to attend this workshop.
PREPARATION BEFORE THE COURSE STARTS : Total 2 ½ hours
There is preparatory work to be completed before the course begins.
Before DAY ONE : 40 minutes of video to watch & approx. 45 minutes of reading
Before DAY TWO : 30 minutes of video to watch & approx. 30 minutes of reading
NB If you prefer, you can watch both the videos and complete the reading before the workshop starts.
MAXIMUM NUMBERS : 30
CANCELLATIONS : Any request to change (eg defer to alternative dates) or cancel your place at a workshop, that is made at less than 21 days before the course start date will be charged in full. Any cancellation / amendments / requests to defer before 21 days, will be subject to a 12.5% handling charge.
Organised through Sleeping Mountain Ltd
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YOUR FREE POEM OFFERING FROM WILLIAM AYOT
A Poem that Speaks for Itself
I am not a piece to be left on the page,
to be flicked over, licked at and spat out by the eye.
I am not to be read on the way to something else.
I take time. I’m a poem. I was made to be spoken.
I hold the sounds that connect you to the world,
the clicks and the splats and the crunches of life.
In me you can hear the song of the nightingale,
the yell of the vixen and the boom of distant waves.
When you speak me, when you utter me,
note the home of your voice: where it settles,
where it lives, what part of you it inhabits.
Now move on, explore the geography of vowels;
place an ‘ee’ in your head, an ‘ah’ in your chest.
Sense the well of emotion below every sound.
Next, take a careful quantity of consonants.
Mix them with the vowels. Add meaning to feeling.
Say, hurt. Say, desire. Say, beauty. Say, loss.
Say, the woods are empty. Say, I long to belong
Now you know the form, you can improvise,
become a curlew, or a monkey, or a blue guitar.
You can free the music, conjure up some fun,
make the madness yours, let the laughter flow.
Above all, you can let the silence in me speak.
Don’t be afraid... Let it hold what it will.
When you finally get to the foot of the page,
you can put me down and walk away.
Until then, I want you to speak every syllable,
to embrace every solitary, sensual word.
I may be no more than another page of poetry,
but when you recite me, we both come alive.
William Ayot
Small Things That Matter
2003
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