by Catherine T. Davidson

Writers gather in a Regent’s University London classroom

On Saturday, April 26th 2025 Exiled Writers Ink hosted a three-hour training session for writers interested in leading creative writing workshops for refugee and migrant community groups. Having done this successfully in the past, EWI was able to obtain a grant to expand this network.

Twelve writers attended, who came from a variety of countries, including Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Turkey and Syria. All were published writers. The workshop was led by poet and novelist Catherine Temma Davidson, a member and former chair of EWI, currently teaching Creative Writing at Regent’s University, where the session was held.

The workshop focused on using objects and texts to inspire new writing and looked at the special needs and vulnerabilities of writing in a new language and new culture at a time of displacement and often in the wake of personal trauma.

Catherine Davidson led the workshop with lots of words of encouragement throughout, full of enthusiasm for the work of sharing creativity, and supportive of everyone there. She helped to set everyone at their ease, explaining that a facilitator needs to show: kindness, enthusiasm, curiosity, attention, respect. And she modelled this.

Catherine reminded us that “we use words to create worlds.” She emphasised that all in that room were poets and writers, whether they call themselves writers, or whether others call them writers: “If we write, we are writers.” That is true for the workshop participants as well. There is no right or wrong in this world of writing, but it is a process.

The presiding image for process was shown on a slide: the spiral staircase, starting in the dark basement of the self and moving to finding others. All of us have this creativity within us, at the bottom of the staircase, just waiting to come to the surface, to come to the light, to come to the open space. Putting words onto paper is the first step, it starts a process of discovery, of creation. You never know where it might lead.

There are different stages to climbing the spiral staircase. Some might be very unsure of how to bring out their own creativity, others may have climbed a few floors already, but we are all on this journey of discovering our own sense of creativity, through the medium of words. In this journey we may revisit what we have previously written, or find new ways of expressing what we wish to communicate; it is a spiral staircase, not a linear journey.

So, how do we encourage others to use their creativity with words? Catherine provided us with a tool kit to work with, using observation, memory and imagination.

We can start with any materials that may be around us. What do you see? be curious and write it down in words, using all of your five senses, of sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste, where appropriate.

Then, bring other dimensions associated in your mind with such objects, associated with the past, such as your memory of people, places, food, smell. Or associated with people or places you have never known, with distant past or with the future, but come alive in your imagination.

Your writing can take you in any direction in which you find inspiration, or anything that is brought up in association with the original object, animal, tree, construction, place or natural element that you started with.

Participants had a chance to practice various techniques, and prompts. They were also given a list of suggested prompts and Catherine shared work that had been produced in a workshop at a homeless shelter and a refugee welcome centre with the prompts. She talked about her experiences, what went well and not so well and her ideas about why.

It was really fascinating to hear at the end of the workshop all the different pieces of writing that came out of the writing workshop, demonstrating the myriad of directions and perspectives taken by those present. We were all on our individual journeys but inspired by what we heard and seen, touched and smelled in the course of the afternoon.

A highlight was a visit to the campus ‘secret garden’ where we gathered sense information and enjoyed the beautiful afternoon.