A witchy post-Valentine’s poetry workshop using love spells, fairy tales, and rebellious tenderness as starting points for new poems.

Charmed: Love Witches and Spells for a broken heart

This writing workshop invites you into the ritual chamber of love spells, heartbreak charms, red candles, old letters, strange desires, and dangerous devotion.

In this Valentine’s season workshop, we’ll explore love spells, charms, fairy tales, folklore, witchy love stories, and old superstitions as starting points for new writing. Rather than thinking of love as something simple or sweet, we’ll approach it as a magical force: unruly, protective, ridiculous, tender, obsessive, transformative, and sometimes a little cursed.

Together, we’ll read and discuss a small selection of magical, romantic, strange, and spellbound texts, looking at how magical stories and poems have used enchantment, longing, danger, devotion, and desire. We’ll also think about love and tenderness as forms of rebellion: ways of caring, refusing, surviving, protecting, and imagining otherwise.

From bewitched minds and forbidden bargains to roses, ribbons, letters, talismans, mirrors, and secret meetings under the moonlight, we’ll gather images and ideas for our own poems, fragments, stories, spells, or something in between.

COVEN is a series of poetry writing sessions for women and genderqueer people led by poet and filmmaker Kate MacAlister. The writing sessions developed from the Creators in Residence programme at Nottingham Central Library in collaboration with Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.

Following a fully booked workshop series exploring feminist folklore, poetry, and archival material, COVEN continues as an ongoing space for writing, reflection, and creative exchange.

Each session focuses on writing poetry, using feminist fairy tales and folktales as starting points. We will read and discuss selected texts, then respond through guided writing exercises and prompts. Some sessions may also include collage-based approaches or work with materials from local collections, such as the Feminist Archive East Midlands.

COVEN is open to all levels. No previous writing experience is required, and you are free to engage in ways that feel comfortable to you! The sessions aim to create a supportive, inclusive environment where people can experiment, develop their voice, and connect with others.

At its core, COVEN offers space to write, reflect, and build community through poetry.

You can connect with the COVEN on Instagram: @thecoven.notts

Connect with Kate: @kissed.by_fire or kate.macalister.writes@gmail.com

Description supplied by the event organiser.