Creative Writing Classes
Memoir and Poetry
Improve Your Writing
A Process-based Approach
My teaching and mentoring style is warm and non judgemental, and I meet my students where they are. I do my best to make my classes and workshops engaging, collaborative spaces. My online classes are delivered in such a way that a previous student exclaimed “you transcend Zoom!” The extracts we read are varied, to promote social equity and understanding and I empower my students’ learning by maintaining a safe and democratic space. Students being workshopped in my classes guide the class in reading their work, unlike traditional MFA programmes, where “workshoppees” are required to keep silent. I promote a process-based approach where “the only way to fail at writing is not to write.” (Gail Sher) I excel at helping students of poetry find the “objective correlative” or deep image for their inner experiences, and in memoir in assisting students in Developmental editing, and finding the through line, the story within the story that they are writing towards. My classes are empowering, fun and practical experiences and create and maintain a sense of writing community.
My Teaching Experience
I have over a decade’s experience as a facilitator of poetry and memoir on two continents, working in community and university settings. I’ve taught in a New York City public hospital, in libraries, schools, was Writer in Residence with Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx and currently teach creative writing in a school in Knocknaheeny, Cork. I’ve worked with students with additional needs, students from the Traveller community, refugees and migrants, and students with English as a second language. I’ve also taught at New York University, University College, Dublin and The American College, Dublin.
Recently I have taught at The Center for Fiction, Hudson Valley Writers Centre and The Irish Writers Centre, mentored via The Munster Literature Centre, led workshops at The Thomas McDonagh Hedge School, Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary and taught in Cork schools via The Unfinished Book of Poetry (mentor in 2023/24 and 2024/25). I also teach via Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools programme as well as the Heritage Council. I’m a mentor with The National Mentoring Programme, and am on a panel of Arts Facilitators, via Cork County Council Library and Arts Service, delivering arts and creative writing workshops and classes throughout the county. I also offer classes to small groups of adults online.
“This has been the third memoir writing course that I've completed in the last year and it has been this one that has made the writing and ideas all come together for me in a way that I wasn't able to see or achieve before. It has been the missing piece and you have been the teacher that I have needed.”
Tara Doonan, student at The Irish Writers Centre
Summer 2025 Adult Classes
WEEKLY POETRY WORKSHOPS
(via Zoom), eight students maximum in each class
Weekly on Tuesdays, 6:30 - 8 pm (GMT)
Weekly on Thursdays, 7:30 - 9 pm (GMT)
This pay-as-you-go class is ideal for poets who are starting to write, or have been writing for some time but need feedback and guidance, to build confidence and to learn how to edit their own work. It will also be of benefit to poets who are working towards their first pamphlet (chapbook) or first collection.
How does it work?
Everyone sends a poem or two in advance, and will have the opportunity to workshop a minimum of one poem per class. You will receive supportive critique and suggestions for edits in the class and will also receive written edits from the participants, including myself. We also look at an exemplary poem for things we might “steal” for our own writing. This is not so much literary analysis as opening the engine of the poem to help us to learn to think as writers. From this we design our own creative triggers or prompts based on form or theme and if there is time, we do some in-class writing, or finish with a sense of something we might work on before the next class. Apart from workshop, the class will focus on craft issues such as the "objective correlative” (finding images in the “outer” world to reflect inner experiences), how to successfully finish a poem by finding resonant poetic closure (and not a cheesy “pat” ending); metaphor / simile / deep imagery; assonance / alliteration; how to lineate or enjamb a poem properly; how to balance thought and emotion, as well as inner and outer worlds.
How Much Does It Cost?
The class is €20 per 90 minute session, which can be paid on a class-by-class basis or monthly, whichever suits you best, via IBAN, Revolut or Paypal. You can join the class for as long as you like, there is no advance commitment to a minimum / maximum period of classes.
How do I sign up?
Any questions, email: david@davidmcloghlin.com
Three Memoir Courses, Summer 2025
Master Class: The Art of Time: How to Use Different Timelines in Our Memoirs and Personal Essays to Improve Our Narrative Voice. 2 Sessions: Saturday, 12 + 19th July,
11:00 am-1:00 pm ET (4-6 pm GMT), via The Shipman Agency
How to Improve Our Memoir or Personal Essays by Learning and Practicing the Core Elements of Creative Non Fiction: a Craft Workshop (online), 4 weekly sessions, 16th July - 6th August, 7 to 9 pm (GMT), via The Munster Literature Centre.
Writing Your Memoir: Balancing Scene and Exposition, a blend of craft and workshop, 10 weekly sessions, 6 - 8 pm ET, 10th July - 11th September, via The Center for Fiction
More About Me: My teaching style is warm, supportive and democratic. In this I am inspired by teachers like Felicia Rose Chavez (The Anti-Racist Creative Writing Workshop). In supporting students in their writing process and establishing a writing practice, I draw from Joan Bolker (Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day) and Gail Sher (One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers). My classes are discussion-based, and a blend of teaching and facilitation. I am an award-winning poet, and writer of memoir, and have taught extensively in several genres, including memoir with The Irish Writers Center, The Center for Fiction and Hudson Valley Writers Center.
Any questions, email: david@davidmcloghlin.com
Classes in Schools
If you are a teacher in a primary or secondary school in Ireland, I’d be happy to work with you directly (contact me for rates), or apply for a grant via Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools programme. The programme pays for 1/2 of the visit. For Writers in Schools, follow these steps:
Consult my profile on the Writers in Schools directory.
Contact me to decide on a date.
Once that’s decided, apply for a visit via this form.
Please note, there is high demand, so apply two months in advance.
“Thanks so much for a wonderful class! You really established a comfortable environment for sharing, and did a great job introducing the important craft aspects of memoir.”
Lillian Duggan, The Ideal World
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Since 2023
Visiting teacher with Writers in Schools.
Poetry as Commemoration, via UCD library (50 hours of teaching in libraries and secondary schools across Munster)
Cruinniú na nÓg (via Cork County Council and My Creative Wish).
Previously: Resident Writer at Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx.
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Since 2023
Memoir: more than 100 hours with The Center for Fiction, Hudson Valley Writers Centre and The Irish Writers Centre.
Two-day poetry workshop at The Thomas McDonagh Hedge School, Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary.
The Unfinished Book of Poetry (mentor in 2023/24 and 2024/25).
Cork County Council (pilot scheme to support employees’ wellbeing through creativity).
West Cork Literary Festival (summer 2023).
Culture Night, Fermoy Library (September 2023).
The American College, Dublin: September-December 2023.
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New York University Writing Fellow and Creative Writing Teacher at Coler-Specialty Hospital (New York): September 2011 to May 2012. Weekly class with long-term-care patients and individual mentorship of a patient with Multiple Sclerosis.
Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx (Writer in Residence, 2013)
Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Master Class, Hill-Stead Museum, on the poetry of place, May 2018.
Resident Writer, Hunts Point Alliance for Children (Bronx, New York) October 2013 to December 2014: Taught craft to teenaged, multilingual students (some with learning challenges) via the workshop method, creating syllabi and curricula involving the work of renowned writers, utilising bilingual Spanish-English texts where appropriate. Developed and used age-appropriate activities to encourage collaboration and constructive critique.
Creative Writing Instructor at New York University, September 2011 to December 2011, where I taught the undergraduate syllabus “An Introduction to Poetry and Fiction”.
Creative Writing and Editorial Mentor to the Young Emerging Writers’ Forum (Dingle, Co. Kerry) October 2008: an Arts Council sponsored project, where teenaged editors put together and published a literary magazine for young people, Dingle, County Kerry.
Graduate Instructor of Hispanic Literature (Spanish poetry and Latin American short story) at University College, Dublin, 2005.