landscape as archive
Friday, 2 October 2026 - 3 nights
A three-night poetry writing retreat exploring landscape as archive, using observation, memory and place as the starting point for new work.
Led by multi-award-winning poet JLM Morton, this retreat offers time, space and guidance to deepen your creative practice within the stunning natural environment here at Oakhill Ponds in Somerset.
Featuring special guest Rachel Bower who will be in conversation with JLM Morton.
All meals, accommodation, workshops, sauna & wild swimming included
From £595 (sharing) or £725 (single occupancy) / deposit £150
what this retreat is
Landscape as Archive is centred around the idea of place as something living, something that holds traces, memory and meaning.
Across the weekend, we’ll explore pond, marsh, meadow and woodland as sites of attention and creative response. Through poetry, field notes and sensory mapping, you’ll begin to read the landscape more closely and develop writing that emerges directly from your surroundings.
The emphasis is on slowing down, noticing and allowing writing to arise from the lived experience of place.
what to expect
- Guided poetry workshops with JLM Morton
- Time for independent writing and reflection
- Close observation of the surrounding landscape
- Approaches including sensory mapping, field notes and archival thinking
- A small, supportive group environment
- Opportunities for swimming, sauna and fireside gathering
By the end of the retreat, you will have developed new writing, deepened your attention to place, and gained new ways of approaching your writing practice.
an idyllic setting
Oakhill Ponds offers a varied and immersive landscape of water, woodland and open meadow as well as the main retreat house.
Writing spaces are spread across our large retreat house as well as the 25-acre site, allowing you to move between environments and find places that support your process, whether by a roaring fire, the quiet library, the water’s edge, in sheltered pavilions, or within your own room.
The retreat house, part of the original Oakhill brewery, is well equipped having two living rooms with open fires, a well resourced library as well as spacious bedrooms. The wider site is intentionally simple and hosts a horse lorry library, two warm Shepherds Huts as well as many spaces to explore, creating the conditions for focused creative work.
the details
writing spaces
- Desks and writing stations in each room
- A sheltered pavilion with wood-burner
- Writing stations across the site
- The Horse Lorry Library
- Library and fireside rooms in The Beeches
what’s included
- Three nights’ accommodation
- All meals (local, seasonal and vegetarian)
- Poetry workshops with JLM Morton
- Celebratory supper with a guest author Rachel Bower whose debut novel It Comes from the River was described as "Haunting, lyrical and thoroughly gripping"
- Shared sauna sessions
- Swimming in spring-fed ponds
- Time to explore the landscape
- Coffee station, seasonal flowers, towels and toiletries in each room
- Wi-Fi across the site
who it’s for
This retreat is open to:
- Writers at any stage
- Poets and those curious about poetry
- Readers and creatives interested in place-based work
- Anyone looking for time, space and guidance to write
No prior experience is required.
- Wood-fired sauna sessions throughout the retreat
- Swimming in spring-fed ponds
- Time to rest, reset and reconnect with the landscape
accommodation options
The former Oakhill Brewery country house sits at the heart of the retreat site. Arranged across several floors, with generous living spaces and a library, it offers a comfortable and characterful setting for reading, rest and creative retreat.
Beautifully handcrafted shepherd's huts set within 25 acres of ponds, woodland and meadow. Each has a private garden, a wood-fired hot tub, and access to our wild-swimming pond and wood-fired sauna.
Spacious canvas tents set among meadow and willow, offering a blend of comfort and off-grid living. Each includes a private outdoor kitchen, hot shower, and access to wild swimming and sauna.
A light-filled three-bedroom apartment in the village of Oakhill, with a private garden for slow mornings and evenings. A comfortable, on-grid stay with access to wild swimming and sauna nearby.
about JLM Morton
JLM Morton is a poet, writer and teacher whose work explores place, memory and the living world.
Her poetry has featured on BBC 6 Music and appeared in leading journals and broadcasts. Her debut collection Red Handed (Broken Sleep Books, 2024) was highly commended in the Forward Prizes and named a Poetry Society Book of the Year.
She teaches for the Poetry School, the Poetry Society and Women Poets Network, and is the founding director of Dialect Writers Collective. Her second collection, Borrowed Ground, is forthcoming in 2026.
Whiteway
The land is dreaming again,
white as a thin shelled egg,
cloud shoulder, quickthorn, stone axe.
Ancient woman with cargo of salt.
Not bleached or alabaster, not
ivory or ashen, pearly, pure or ice.
But white as mycelium strands
digging at limestone
to make a road on the ridge.
The land says listen and merge,
like ammonite held in oolite.
How rock wants a wet body to make fossil.
Such are the things we’ve forgotten,
adrift from the otherworld
of mole, cave, worm.
Whiteway’s memories of kin’d —
a sinuous line that pulls us back, dwells
in our unions and uncertainties.
To be with the season,
dream the road, says the land.
Walk us back to ourselves.
JLM Morton