Writing with Images: Regrowing Roots

In this workshop, fiction writer Penny Simpson and photo-artist Ania Ready will guide participants to explore ways of writing about characters whose lives are not fixed in one place.

Regrowing roots will take inspiration from Modernist writer Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska’s poetry and short story writing, as well as introduce participants to Ania’s process of ‘re-enactment’ which she used to create a series of highly original black and white photographs re-imagining Sophie’s life.

Regrowing roots is the third workshop in a series of three creative writing workshops devised by Dr Penny Simpson, award-winning author and Visiting Fellow at the University. All three workshops are inspired by the life and work of Sophie Gaudier-Breska (1872-1925). Part of Sophie’s archive is held in the Special Collections at the University including literary works, notebooks and her 800-page diary which takes the form of an extended imagined conversation with her partner the artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915) who was killed in action fighting in the First World War. Born in Poland, Sophie lived in four different countries and wrote in three languages, factors which help shape her unique legacy.