Gerry Cambridge

I have worked with all ages between 5 and 85. The content of my workshops is open to discussion with the organisers beforehand. I can offer workshops about advanced levels of poetic technique, such as writing sonnets, or about starting out as a poet, though I like varying the approach, often using my own photography, whether as A3 images or as projected slides, and playing harmonica to demonstrate aspects of rhythm. Sometimes, in particular with primary or secondary schools, I do a series of anecdotal tailored workshops combining storytelling and my knowledge of natural history with poetry. The Lawthorn pamphlet (see Publications) was the result of such a series.
Since May 2003 I have been the resident male tutor for winners of the Pushkin Prizes in Scotland, a creative writing award for teenagers, organised by Lindsey Fraser and Kathryn Ross. As part of their prize the winners have a week’s creative writing at Moniack Mhor writing centre in Inverness-shire. The female tutor has been either Catherine MacPhail or Diana Hendry.
Recent projects have included a series of poetry workshops for the Scottish Poetry Library in two primary schools in Pollokshields, in association with the Tramway’s Hidden Gardens. Most of the pupils were of Asian or African backgrounds. We walked the Gardens and wrote poems out of the experiences. The willow warblers had just arrived, having flown some 8000 kilometres in about three weeks from Africa, and their frail lilting song was everywhere around the Gardens. When I pointed this out to the children, one of the boys asked, “So are they African, or Scottish?” “Both,” I said.
Because I have a wide range of writing experience, not just as a poet but as a professional freelance — I produced over a dozen articles for Reader’s Digest in my mid-twenties — and as an editor, I'm also in a position to talk about the more practical aspects of life as a writer.