ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS: A WRITING WORKSHOP FOR ANYONE

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS is the beating heart of the Devotion workshop ethos. It’s a workshop designed for everyone and anyone: anyone just starting to write, everyone coming back to writing after a hiatus, anyone in a rut with their practice, everyone finding their existing tools and techniques stale, or anyone just wanting to refresh their approach to writing.

Informed by twenty years of teaching, a passion for radical pedagogy, and a deeply held belief that the practice of creative writing can be transformative for everyone and anyone, ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS is the beating heart of Devotion founder Sophie Robinson’s teaching practice, and an experiment in what can happen when we decide — wherever we are — to begin again. Fall in love with your practice, for the first time or the hundredth. 

Across four workshops we will look at works of prose and poetry by Wanda Coleman, Dodie Bellamy, Maggie Nelson, Frank O'Hara, Diane di Prima, Anne Boyer, Bernadette Mayer, and more. Participants will be given rejuvenating and expansive prompts to write from in the workshop. Unlike other writing workshops — often centred on feedback and sharing work —  the focus of Devotion is on practice itself.

Topics covered:

• Why we write

• What writing can do for us emotionally, creatively, intellectually and spiritually

• How to build writing routines, prompts and creative play into our lives

• Writing with and through burnout

• Metaphor and imagery

• Originality, newness and vitality of expression

• Finding form(s)

• Working with resistance

• Pleasure, joy and excess as antidotes to writer’s block

Length: 4x2 hour workshops (8 hours total)

Workshop Recording Date: January 2026

Facilitator: Sophie Robinson 

REDUX//RECORDINGS FROM THE DEVOTION WORKSHOP ARCHIVES

REDUX is your chance to dip into our archive of workshop recordings and purchase past courses at a lower rate to take in your own time.

Each workshop will take you through a series of writing prompts and allow you to write in “real” time along with live participants.

Upon purchase you will receive an email with a link to all course materials, and a password. Purchase of the course grants you 12 months access to all the video recordings of the workshop, as well as extensive written and audio materials, prompts, and further reading.

SOPHIE ROBINSON is a poet, novelist, nonfiction writer and teacher. She is the author of Prairie Oyster (2026) and Rabbit (2018). Her writing has been published in Granta, The Guardian, Stylist, BOMB Magazine, The Believer, N+1, The Poetry Review and The White Review. 

Sophie founded Devotion in 2020 as a radical, inclusive and accessible creative writing workshop space. She was previously a full time assistant professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia for ten years, and has facilitated public creative writing workshops at the Tate, the V&A, the ICA, the British Library, Arvon, The Poetry Society, and The National Poetry Library.