- Event Date: 17/01/2026
How to Regain your Soul with Victoria Field
Event Details
- 13:00
- Calthorpe Community Garden 258-274 Gray's Inn Road London WC1X 8LH
- From £18
Event Description
In his poem, ‘How to Regain Your Soul’, William Stafford writes, ‘The white butterflies dance/
by the thousands in the still sunshine’. This is an apt image for the multi-faceted ways our psyches appear to ourselves and others. Where does the idea of a soul fit into our sense of self?
Many individuals experience both a distancing from established religious practices and terminology, and simultaneously, a yearning for a metaphysical framework to make sense of their lives. In my research on pilgrimage and on a year-long writers residency at Truro Cathedral, I noted how poetry and expressive writing can give us non-dogmatic and permissive ways of exploring the bigger questions of how we live and want to live.
Victoria Field has published poetry, a memoir, translations, and edited books on therapeutic writing. Her co-translation with Natalia Bukia-Peters of Georgian poet Lia Sturua’s On The Contrary won the 2024 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation. She is a Sessional Academic at Canterbury Christ Church University and an Associate in the Academy of Sustainable Futures. Her PhD explored narratives of transformation in pilgrimage. She collaborates with Eduard Heyning on music and poetry performances often inspired by sacred spaces. She mentors for the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy on the use of poetry and expressive writing in the community.
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This long-established and ground-breaking course for personal and professional development will provide you with an understanding of therapeutic and reflective writing techniques for working personally or with groups.
The course explores the main approaches in therapeutic and reflective writing by encouraging you to explore your own life through writing. Weekly readings offer a theoretical background for those intending to apply their learning to others.
Delivered online over eight weeks, the course has been designed by Lapidus members Victoria Field and Anne Taylor and is tutored by Kate McBarron — three highly experienced facilitators and teachers in the field.
In this workshop, reclaim your voice. Begin testing out what you have to say, and experiment with new metaphors and motifs to do justice to the vastness of your health or care story.
Here our focus is on finding a language, style and voice for your writing about health and illness that best reflects your story. How might you capture living with an illness, being disabled, or providing care using words that adequately reflect the complexity of your experience?
We’ll consider the expressive potential of creative writing as a corrective to prejudice and ignorance. We will also explore texts that write beyond the simple binaries of being well and unwell, life and death, fighter or victim. Contemporary works which upend conventional norms around writing about health and illness will be a stimulus in the reading material we draw from.
Course Outline
– Session two of a series of live zoom workshops, beginning on February 18th, with tutor of expressive and therapeutic writing, and coach, Andrew Kauffmann. Including a combination of reading, discussion and writing exercises.
– Reading material provided outside of the Zoom session
– Resources on telling your story within safe boundaries and the benefits to expressive writing on health and care experiences
Content rooted in the social model of disability, open to all people with health and care needs, and those who provide care
Paced to be a comfortable writing experience, suited to writers of all levels. There will be a short comfort break. There is no expectation to be on camera, if you don’t feel comfortable appearing on camera. Neither will there be any expectations around sharing what you’ve written with other participants. There will be an added focus in this coming series on writing in a range of experimental forms, mixing genres and without constraints or concern for convention on how we might write our story.
A structured 4-week course exploring self-compassion through creative writing and embodied practice. Develop a kinder inner voice, reframe patterns of self-criticism, and build sustainable practices for emotional resilience.
Drawing from Paul Gilbert’s Compassion Focused Therapy, Kristin Neff’s self-compassion research, and person-centred approaches, this course integrates psychological frameworks with creative exploration including two-pen dialogue, visual mapping, embodied awareness, and collaborative poetry.
The course is limited to 8 participants to help foster community and a sense of safety, and all participants receive a comprehensive 47-page companion guide. The guide contains exercises, weekly trackers, frameworks, and written and video resources for ongoing practice.
The course is designed with neurodivergent processing and varied energy levels in mind, with built-in safety supports and permission to adapt.
No previous writing experience required. Limited to 8 participants for intimate, supported exploration. Zoom link will be provided the day before the course starts.
Book direct: https://buy.stripe.com/cNiaEZ9fC6Un1N28KM9Zm08
Or via my website where the full course outline can be downloaded: https://www.katepoll.co.uk/#compassionjournalling
Limited concession rate places available: £149: https://buy.stripe.com/cNiaEZ9fC6Un1N28KM9Zm08