Open Book

These vibrant and thoughtful monthly Open Book sessions are led online by writer Beth Godfrey.

Open Book, Mondays 1st February, 1st March, 5th April, 3rd May and 7th June, 10am to 11.30am, Online, Women only, 16+

Read poems and short stories together as prompts for your own creative writing. Each session focuses on a theme such as Home, Grow and Transform, and Garden.

Beth Godfrey is a writer and performer with a background in theatre. Her work has been commissioned by Open Book Unbound, Strange Town and the Festival of Physics, and has been published by Oxford University Press. She is an experienced facilitator interested in elevating the voices of women and young people. For Open Book she leads group poetry sessions with Shakti Women’s Aid, whose work has been published and discussed on BBC Radio 6.

This is one of our “take part” events this Autumn – we’d love you to get involved with the writing exercises, but there’s no pressure to share your work!

See all the upcoming Open Book events here.

Event Outline

9.55am: Signing in. You can get settled and sign in to the session before it begins at 10am.

10am: Welcome and Housekeeping. Welcome and introductory comments from GWL member of staff. Opportunity to familiarise ourselves with Zoom and the GWL approach to workshops.

10.10am: Introduction and Word Gathering. Introduction from Beth and first exercise to generate words.

10.15am: Feedback Words. Group share with each other words they’ve generated.

10.20am: Read Poem Together. Beth and one volunteer both to read poem.

10.25am: Discuss Poem. Opportunity to hear from the group their individual responses to the writing.

10.35am: Writing Practice on Theme. Opportunity to write in response to a prompt from the poem, attempting to use some of the words gathered from the start of the session,

10.45am: Share Writing. Individuals share writing and other members are able to respond (but not critique) with what resonated. There is no obligation to share own work.

11am: Read 2nd Poem Together. Beth and one volunteer both to read poem.

11.05 am: Discuss Poem. Opportunity to hear from the group their individual responses to the writing.

11.12 am: Writing Practice on Theme. Opportunity to write in response to a prompt from the poem, attempting to use some of the words gathered from the start of the session.

11.18am: Share Writing. Individuals share writing and other members are able to respond (though we won’t critique) with what resonated. There is no obligation to share your work.

11.28am: Poem on Theme to Close: If time, Beth to read final poem to close.

11.30am: Session ends.

Booking

The event is free and for women-only*. To attend, please book below and we will share an email invitation with you.  If you would like to make a donation to Glasgow Women’s Library, you can do so here. Please note that booking will close the Friday before the workshop and you will receive your email invitation a few days before the event takes place.

*All women-only events are inclusive of Trans and Intersex women, as well as non-binary and gender fluid people who are comfortable in a space that centres the experience of women.

Accessibility

This session takes place via an online video call link. If you would like to attend, please book below and we will share an email invitation along with simple and straight forward instructions on how this will work. If you have any concerns about how this will work for you, please do get in touch and we’ll do all we can to support you in joining the session.

An automated live transcript using Otter.ai is available during this event. We also have a small amount of funding available to provide live captioning through Stagetext for some of our Spring events. Stagetext captioning is provided in-person and is therefore more accurate. Please get in touch with Emily on emily.ilett@womenslibrary.org.uk at least 3 weeks before the event if this would be helpful to you and we’ll work to arrange this. See here for upcoming events where live captioning with Stagetext is arranged.