Free Writers’ Workshop with the Bards of Dorchester and Dorset

Writers’ Workshop with the Bards of Dorchester and Dorset
Inspired by Hardy: Writing Place, Memory and Voice
Led by Rebecca Danicic, Bard of Dorchester, and Peter Roe, Grand Bard of Dorset and Director of The Jawbone Collective CIC

Part of the 2026 THS Conference & Festival Programme

All Welcome but booking essential – You do not need to be a published writer to take part.

This two-hour workshop explores how Thomas Hardy’s poetry continues to inspire contemporary writing rooted in landscape, memory and emotional geography.

Aimed at participants already familiar with Hardy’s work, the session will draw upon poems including Wessex Heights and Lulworth Cove, alongside contemporary response pieces by Peter and Rebecca. Through close reading, discussion and guided creative exercises, participants will consider how Hardy transformed landscape into emotional and symbolic terrain, and how modern writers might continue that conversation within their own practice.

The workshop will examine themes of place, memory, distance, loss, belonging and the layered relationship between real and imagined landscapes within Hardy’s Wessex. Participants will be encouraged to produce new creative work during the session, responding both to Hardy and to their own experiences of place and memory.

The workshop also forms part of The Jawbone Collective’s developing Poetry in Place initiative, connected to the wider Thomas Hardy centenary commemorations planned for 2028.

The event is part of  The 27th International Thomas Hardy Conference & Festival