Photo above: one of the approximately 400 year old trees on the castle grounds

Writing & Connecting with the Land Workshops

Get in Touch with Ireland

Writing Workshops with Kelli Russell Agodon

Kelli Russell Agodon will lead generative writing sessions, open to all participants. She will offer fun and innovative prompts to help us write new poems—poems that could only be written in a castle. These will be uplifting gatherings designed to help you create the poems you most need to write. In the final session, we’ll turn toward sharing. Participants are invited to bring one work-in-progress, and together we’ll create a supportive circle of readers who respond as fellow poets and writers—offering ideas, encouragement, and possibilities for where your work might go next.

About the Workshop Provider, Kelli Russell Agodon:

Kelli Russell Agodon’s newest book is Dialogues with Rising Tides from Copper Canyon Press. She’s the author of four collections of poems, two books of poetry prompts, and she co-edited the first eBook anthology of women's poetry, Fire on Her Tongue. Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press where she works as an editor and book cover designer. She lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State on traditional lands of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people where she’s an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com

Kelli’s books:

Connecting with the Land with Deirdre Pulgram Arthen

Deirdre Pulgram Arthen will offer three workshops specifically designed to help you get in touch with the lands we are on, as well as an honoring ancestors ritual for Samhain/Halloween.

About the Workshop Provider, Deirdre Pulgram-Arthen

Deirdre Pulgram-Arthen has a passion for creating deeply spiritual, personal experiences of the sacred—in recognition of ourselves as a part of the natural world, and as a way of expanding our connections within the human community. As the director of EarthSpirit, a non-profit focused on current and traditional European earth-centered spiritualities, she creates rituals for celebration, seasonal cycles and rites of passage—including the sacred passage into death. By using music and poetry to reach beyond rational thought and touch the depths of our felt experience, the arts serve as passageways for transformation and healing. Deirdre has worked in service to her local, spiritual, and interfaith communities for 40 years. She has a graduate degree in counseling psychology, is a certified Death Midwife, and a published author and composer of sacred chants. She is a mother and a grandmother, which is her favorite title. Deirdre lives in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts with a small community on a 130 acre nature preserve.

About the retreat organizer, NatureCulture® and Writing the Land®

Lis McLoughlin, PhD is the founder and director of NatureCulture® based in Northfield, Massachusetts. NatureCulture® works at the intersection of the arts, environment, and social justice. Our main projects include Writing the Land® which pairs poets with conserved lands and publishes anthologies sold to support land conservation; publishing other books of poetry that help connect humans with the rest of Nature; and hosting international writing retreats that help conserve lands in the places we visit. See all we do by visiting other parts of this website. Click here for Our Story.

Optional Photography Workshop and Headshots with Local Photographer

Andreas Riemenschneider

Take your best vacation photos ever! We all enjoyed the workshop with Andreas in 2025, and those who ordered headshots are extremely happy with them—-great opportunity to have high-quality, professional photos done for book covers, linked-in, etc. Highly recommended add-on to your experience in Ireland…..

If there are enough people who want to add on headshots and/or a photography workshop we will offer this as something to add on: $100 photo workshop; $60 headshots.

Events—-all are included in the cost of the retreat, all are optional to attend

(see more about events on this page)

• Renaissance Feast

• Irish Traditional Feast

• Irish Storytelling

• Whisky Tasting

• Honoring our Ancestors ritual dinner and bonfire

• Asado (bbq) party

Other activities on site:

• 200 acres of castle grounds on which to roam—-commune with trees hundreds of years old

• Hot Tub

• Sauna

• Tennis

• Plunge Pool

• Darts

• Snooker