RETREAT – Writing the Senses – Writing in Place

Writing the Senses – Writing in Place

A Writing Retreat with Alison Pouliot

Throughout this three-day/four-night retreat at the Bundanoon Guest House, author, ecologist and environmental photographer – Alison Pouliot invites you to enter more fully into the living world and bring its textures, atmospheres, strangeness, and complexity onto the page. Designed to reawaken the sensory dimensions of writing, this workshop sharpens attention to place, embodiment, and perception. Whether you write about the natural world or simply want to deepen the felt reality of your work, it will expand your imaginative range, calibrate your powers of observation, awaken curiosity toward unfamiliar lifeforms and environments, and develop a richer, more precise sensory vocabulary — particularly the elusive and often-overlooked language of scent.

And “place” need not mean “wilderness”. It may be a subway carriage, a skyscraper, a medieval monastery, a neglected garden, or the interior terrain of memory itself. Every environment carries its own sensory pulse and character, emotional weather, and hidden stories.

Through guided exercises, field observation, and encounters with a Wunderkammer of natural and curious objects, where you will explore how attention transforms language, and how sensory detail generates atmosphere, emotional resonance, and narrative depth. We’ll work with objects and imagery, sound and texture, light and scent, investigating how environments shape consciousness, memory, desire, and story.

Participants will develop practical techniques for crafting vivid imagery, grounding scenes in specificity, and creating prose that feels immersive, embodied, and alive. There will be ample time for writing, walking, reflection, and discussion.

Further information about the retreat HERE

For further mushroom forays, talks and workshops, see Alison’s full program HERE.