In June, as Nottingham Poetry Festival filled the city with words, we couldn’t resist joining in! Writing about nature is known to support mental wellbeing — it can deepen our connection with the world around us and offer a moment of stillness amidst our often-hectic lives.
Noticing Nature: Poetry and Mindfulness in the Heart of the City
Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust recently hosted three poetry and mindfulness workshops. Camille McCawley recounts the events and highlights the importance of nature in mental wellbeing.
In my spare time I’m a freelance poet (so I may be a little biased), and with the help of some brilliant Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust volunteers, we hosted three Noticing Nature Poetry and Mindfulness workshops. Two took place in the small garden at our Sneinton Market head office, and one in the hidden gem of Barker Gate Rest Garden. I wanted to showcase these beautiful green spaces in the heart of the city — proof that you don’t have to go far to feel the benefits of time in nature.
If you’re looking to explore more green urban spaces, the Green Map of Nottingham is a great place to start. It highlights a wide range of green spaces across the city, with helpful details about accessibility, facilities, and special plant features you might spot.
The workshops offered a gentle, creative space to slow down, notice the small things, and explore nature through poetry. We began with simple mindfulness activities — like tuning into the sounds around us or choosing one small detail (a crack in a leaf, the sway of a stem) to describe slowly and with care.
It was a delight to explore my writing in a beautiful garden environment, surrounded by kind and wonderful writers. It reminded me that I need to get out into nature and be creative more often!
We also drew inspiration from poets who beautifully capture the relationship between people and the wild. Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese and Ada Limón’s Instructions on Not Giving Up helped guide our reflections.
We hope to hold similar workshops in the future, but in the meantime, here are some activities you can try at home or while out in nature:
Noticing Nature Prompts
Here are a few simple activities you can try yourself:
- The One Square Metre Challenge
- Find a small patch of ground — in a park, garden, or even a pavement crack — and list everything you can see, hear, smell, and feel in that tiny space.
-
Personify a Creature or Plant
Choose something in nature and write as if you are it. What do you see, what do you fear, how do you move?
-
Freewrite Prompt
Use the phrase “My favourite place in nature is...” and write freely for five minutes. Don’t worry about structure — if you don’t know what to say, write that until something new comes. You might be surprised by what appears!
Poems from the Workshops
Below are some of the beautiful pieces inspired by our Nature Noticing workshops for Nottingham Poetry Festival. They remind us that even the smallest encounters with the natural world can spark something creative, grounding, and full of feeling.
We’re so grateful to everyone who joined us and shared their words — and hope they inspire others to slow down and notice, too.
———
Cylindroiulus Britannicus
by Leanne
and then, the wriggling, segmented body
of a millipede snakes gracefully
across the skin of my thigh.
A tiny brown necklace,
armoured carapace held aloft
by a ripple of elegant legs.
Ready to curl around the leaf mould
like a question mark. An alien being,
a sci fi denizen in miniature.
Walking exactly the way a stick doesn’t,
the way a line of text might walk
directly off the page of my notebook.
———
When in Nature I lose:
by Annette (AvW Initial Poet)
Stress
The To Do List
Taxing tasks of taxation, the various columns, their bright red sub-totals
Torment of searching on the desktop PC for the last updated spreadsheet, only to find, horror -didn’t save the updates properly
Creating my personal cloud of blue- tinged Anglo- Saxon expressions- they can help to satisfy my angst another day
So, what do I really lose when in nature?
Absolutely nothing -nothing that is as important as I myself conspire it to be
Whereas what do I gain -absolutely anything and potentially everything
of true value to my life
and that I want to feel a part of, in my life
———
When in Nature I
by Annette (AvW Initial Poet)
Sit and wait, feel my heart rate – not particularly fast normally – yet note when am in Nature
it slows down, my heart is helping me- I do so want to absorb each and every sensory discovery
To observe, to register, enjoy and to store them all up – for future reference, or delight,
for soothing me - when am feeling trapped inside a day over- filled with noise, traffic fumes, too much concrete
Instead of smelling the air of Nature, soil, flowers, bark
seeing the sky, the greens, so many different greens and so many other varied colours, vivid, subtle
touching soft petals, spiky spines, luscious or crunchy leaves, sitting on a carpet of tufty grass or maybe on a wide, multi-grooved, textured trunk of an ancient oak and imagining its songs, it’s rings of history
In Nature, I am completed - A replete homo sapiens
I am home
———
Untitled
by Phil Slocombe
Written about his own wildlife garden (as pictured below)
I’m a hare hiding within.
I’m a swallow darting above.
I’m a mole, pushing the flowers up.
But only after that human couple disappears!
