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All Lyra Fest venues are wheelchair accessible. Our full 2025 Access Information Pack is available at www.lyrafest.com.

Date: Sunday 4th May 2025
Venue: Arnolfini (Workshop Room)
Time: 10:00 - 12:00
Tickets: £8 (£5 concession, £10 solidarity)

Writing the Body
A writing workshop led by poet Maria Ferguson, author of Swell (Penguin, 2025).

The body is a house, a friend, an enemy and a constant. But how do we translate physicality onto the page? Through close readings and provocations we will praise, scrutinise and celebrate the body in all its victories and betrayals. Expect to leave with lots of drafts and ideas for new poems as well as a greater understanding of the role of the body in contemporary poetry.

Maria Ferguson’s second poetry collection Swell (Penguin, 2025) is a raw and powerful documentation of one woman’s experience of becoming a mother. Against a backdrop of the sounds and sensations of daily life, she longs for her own mother's embrace, observes as her body changes and charts a course through loss and wilting house plants towards recovery, empowerment and renewal.

Maria Ferguson is a writer and performer. She was a finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Prize and her debut collection, Alright, Girl? (Burning Eye, 2020) was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes. Her one-woman show, Fat Girls Don’t Dance, won a Saboteur Award; Essex Girl was shortlisted for the Tony Craze Award and won Show of the Week at VAULT Festival. Her second poetry collection, Swell, is published by Penguin.


Part of Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival 2025
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