What do we know about our family histories? What don’t we know? How do we live with the silences that shape our stories?

In this hands-on workshop poetry will become a tool for personal storytelling, exploring themes of family history, memory and the unknown. Together with poet-in-residence, Ophira, we will explore writing into the gaps of our own family histories. We will use poetry to speculate, imagine, mourn and reconnect.

Writing about and around the silences and absences that shape our personal heritage, we will write poems that weave together what is known with what we can only speculate and imagine, considering the role of unanswered, or perhaps unanswerable, questions.

This workshop is part of Ophira’s poetry residency at the museum and is suitable for both, complete beginners and those with a bit more experience of creative writing. Just come along!

ABOUT OPHIRA ADAR

Ophira Adar is a poet and writer from London with family ties to Manchester. Her poetry investigates questions of identity, spirituality and belonging, often exploring a dialogue between the ancient and the modern, the spoken and the unspoken, the known and the unknown. Ophira’s work has been featured in Poetry Wales, Under The Radar, 14 Magazine and Butcher’s Dog. She holds an MA in Writing Poetry from the Poetry School. Her debut poetry pamphlet will be released in 2025 with Black Cat Press.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
This event is suitable for ages 10+.