Poetry Workshop with King Ink at Seventeen Nineteen

"There are walls in this city, too high to see over, but we are climbing them.
There are fires in this city, in the hearts of its people, and we are lighting them."
- Helen Wilko

King Ink CIC is a home for hidden poets, and we believe that everyone has poetry and stories to share. During our residency at Seventeen Nineteen our aim is to hear as many poems and stories as we can from local people, and we hope to inspire some fresh faces to share their stories with us.

The overall theme of these sessions is "something like prayer". Once upon a time prayer was a core part of our daily lives, for many people it remains important, but most of us have replaced prayer with other practices - we meditate, we run, we do crafts. Where once we knew exactly what to do when life gave us lemons, now we all have unique ways of making lemonade.

With this project we want to explore how people remember loved ones, how we express joy and gratitude, how we deal with remorse and sorrow, and how we celebrate the most treasured moments in our lives... and we hope that you will join us.

Each session is run by an experienced writer who will help you find new ways to tell your stories. You don’t have to be a "poet" or a "writer", and you can come to just one session or several if you choose to. Alongside this James Whitman will be running a few formal drop-ins at Seventeen Nineteen, most weeks from now until September.

We are collecting stories and poems in a pamphlet, a special episode of our King Ink podcast, and in a sharing event at Seventeen Nineteen in September. If you have a story or a poem to share, please get in touch. It doesn’t have to be polished or even written down. We are all about helping people to get these stories off their chests and into the world.

The best way to contact us is through the King Ink Facebook Group, which anyone can join. We'll be sharing regular updates about the project there, and we'd be. happy to chat with you about how you could get involved. We hope to hear from you soon.

Our Guest Writers

Friday 7th and Sunday 16th June - James Whitman will introduce the project and explore teeny tiny memoir writing.

Friday 21st and Saturday 29th June - Rowan Macabe, Newcastle's door-to-door poet, will be helping us explore Seventeen Nineteen's unique heritage and its hopes for the future.

Friday 5th and Saturday 13th July - Steve Urwin, host of Durham's Poetry Jam, will be bringing his big bag of poetry prompts and absolutely no rules.

Friday 19th and Saturday 27th July - Katy Vigurs from Dead Good Legacies will be joining us to explore creating blackout and collage poetry.

Friday 2nd and Saturday 10th August - Helen Wilko, host of King Ink, will be using the book Tales and Ballads of Wearside to inspire new creative writing.

Tuesday 13th and Saturday 24th August - Kirsten Luckins who runs Tees Women Poets will be teaching us some techniques to help us perform our poetry.

All of our workshops are free to attend, but places are limited. Please let us know if you book a spot and change your plans o that we can free up the space for someone else.

Host or Publisher Seventeen Nineteen