Fresh Fruit Workshop: Be/Speaking

Be/Speaking will again focus on themes of place and belonging, but this time attendees will work towards a spoken word performance, focusing on techniques such as use of body language and non-verbal sound in order to convey meaning and express ourselves rather than word choice alone. We will again draw inspiration from Rothschild’s work under this different lens, particularly looking at ‘Safe’ for how relationships to place can be expressed without/alongside language. Attendees who participated in the Be/Longing workshop on 01.10.26 are welcome to bring their written pieces from that session to adapt into performance pieces. New attendees are encouraged to bring along a relevant piece of writing related to the themes of place and belonging to use for this workshop

It’s recommended to attend both of Gwenhwyfar’s workshops on 01.10.26 and 08.10.26, as the second session develops what participants have written in the first. However, this is not mandatory.

Gwenhwyfar Ferch Rhys is a writer and spoken word artist from the Scottish Borders. After being appointed a young makar by the Scottish Poetry Library, she performed at festivals such as StAnza, Dandelion, and Wigtown, as well as on ITV News and BBC Radio Scotland. In 2022 she moved to Dublin to study English Literature and Classical Civilisations at Trinity College, where she founded and thrice-captained the TCD poetry slam team, placed in the top 8 at the All-Ireland Poetry Slam, and became Editor-in-Chief of Icarus, Ireland’s oldest arts journal. During this time she also studied creative writing in Melbourne, where she headlined Mixed Bag poetry night. In 2025, her debut solo show [ac]quiesonce premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe. Since graduating, she has competed at slams like Loud Poets Dumfries and Paisley’s Storytree, returned to the Fringe with her new show After Pride Comes, and begun writing for Snack magazine. Her work has been published in Gutter, Poetry Wales, and Voiceworks, as well as by Bloomsbury, 404Ink and Arachne Press, amongst others. Across all forms she works in, her writing is consistently situated at the intersection of the personal and political, of myth and history, and of anguish and whimsy.