My week’s workshop (A Dream with a Pen in Its Hand) at Daku in Fiji, 11 to 18 June 2011, seemed to go off very beautifully, from where I sat. Apart from learning a lot from my class, walking, snorkelling and jogging, and fumbling my way toward grace in some yoga classes, I got a few poems out of my week in paradise, along with a mild suntan and a fresh addiction: Fiji. I’ll be back—to holiday and to lead new workshop

One of the poems I wrote, “The Bay” got longlisted in the Montreal Prize (which I won with another poem, “Walking Underwater”, written earlier last year in Oregon).

We all got a lot of good writing done in and out of class. A couple of class members wrote the first drafts of stories they entered in competions later in the year, with some success.

i mention all this just in case you’re thinking all we did was swim and walk along the shore. Which we also did.

The dates for my next retreat at Daku are 18 to 25 August 2012.

And to see what we got up to in Daku: http://dakuresort.com/blog/creative-writing-retreat-mark-tredinnick/