Little Mountain Writing Workshops
From 15 November 2024

MOUNT GIBRALTAR (“The Gib”), known to its first peoples as Mittagong or Little Mountain, is the highest point between Sydney and Canberra. I live and write at the feet of this little mountain, here along the Wingecarribee, and I draw inspiration daily from its weathered form and its antiquity, from its birds and the way it shreds cloud and sheds shadow and light. This is Gundungurra Land—storied and loved and sustaining country—and our title to our small plot is as dodgy as any colonial claim anywhere else on the continent, so I try in poetry and prose to do some justice and make some reparation for the improbability and inequity of my being here at all, letting the place take imaginative possession of me daily and teach me some of what it knows.

            The Little Mountain Writing Workshops (Poetry and Creative Writing) offer you the chance, over a weekend, to draw inspiration from this beautiful place, too, and to contribute, through what you learn here and the work the Little Mountain schools you to make, to the restorative work literature performs. Doing justice to the gift of being alive.

            The workshops involve a little reading and a little walking, some tuition on the craft, a chance to write and share new work and to get some feedback from me and a small group of fellow writers.

            We have a studio apartment here for one person (or a couple); but Bowral (and the rest of the Highlands) is replete with AirBnBs now, so accommodation shouldn’t be too hard to find. Plus, it’s beautiful here, in all seasons. So come and make a long weekend of it.

            We start with introductions, a light meal and drinks of Friday evening. Saturday morning the workshop begins; Saturday afternoon is free for writing and walking or a visit to the gardens, woods, and galleries. Saturday evening we meet after dinner to share work. Sunday morning we’ll continue the conversation, instruction, and sharing from ten till lunch at 1:00. We’ll spend two more hours in the afternoon workshopping before closing with an early dinner in the evening.