Bio

2024 -2025 saw Susan successfully launch Out, About & In Touch - Creative Wellbeing & Mental Health workshops highlighting the benefits of group synergy, writing , doodling, art-making, design thinking, flow and other research findings in relation to creativity and wellbeing. She is the author of three collections published by Doire Press, 2011, 2013 & 2018, Susan reads a selection from all three books here, at University of Missouri-St.Louis (Feb, 2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vno1MG2pSQE&t=13s . Her poems have appeared, among elsewhere, in: The Cafe Review, Oregan, USA - Gather In, in a Special Irish Edition; Bosom Pals,Ed Marie Cadden Doire Press, 2017) an anthology entirely in aid of Breast Cancer Research in the National UniversityHospital, Galway and When They've Grown Another Me in Poetry Ireland Review , Dec 2018.https://www.poetryireland.ie/publications/poetry-ireland-review/online-archive/view/when-theyve-grow. Online, A Late, Late Afterword was published on the Robert Garnham Professor of Whimsy website (2021), Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, https://www.spillingcocoa.com/. Here Much to do With Poverty, More About Wealth was published on Culture Matters (Jan 2025) https://www.culturematters.org.uk/here-much-to-do-with-poverty-but-more-with-wealth/. In January 2018 her poems were Commended in the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Competition.

She has been an invited reader of her poems at local readings in Galway, Cork and Dublin and at festivals, including the Belfast Book Festival, Cuirt International Festival of Literature and Clifden Arts Festival and her poems have been read on radio.

Susan completed her degree in social science and qualified as a professional social worker in Trinity College, Dublin 1975. She was a psychotherapist, trainer, facilitator and occasional consultant to organisations for over thirty years until her retirement in 2012. Drawing together her writing with her earlier skills she has written interviews and facilitated conversations mediated by poetry. She has also published creative non-fiction.

Her workshop Having a New Conversation: About Dreaming was listed on the The Cuirt International Festival of Literature Programme (2015) and she facilitates similar workshops on a variety of themes, discussed through the medium of poetry, regularly and occasionally in local community settings. on the east side of the country.

While a founding editor of Skylight 47 Susan interviewed: then Ireland Professor of Poetry, Harry Clifton; Kay Ryan, the Pullitzer prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate, invited to Ireland by Dromineer Literature Festival - and Dani Gill, who talks about curating The Cuirt International Literature Festival.https://skylight47poetry.wordpress.com/previous-issues/. Susan's interview of Maeve O'Sullivan, appeared in The Honest Ulsterman February, 2018.http://humag.co/features/around-the-world-in-poetry-haiku-and-haibun

Saturday, 2 August 2025

Creative Wellbeing & Mental Health Events Autumn 2025

                 Again in Person       

              Former & New Participants can Expect A Warm Welcome        


FREE Taster & Reconnect Event

Tues 9th September, 2-4pm


WORKSHOP, Fee €120. Eight Sessions Tues Oct - Dec 

  Oct 7th - 21st, Nov 11th - Dec 9th   2-4pm

VENUES for Both Events: Georges St Upr., Dunlaoghaire/Glasthule
Close to the People's Park. Dart, buses & car-parking close by


With Susan Lindsay

Explore creativity, writing, doodling art-making, poetry, heritage.
Enjoy the synergy gernerated. Inspirational sharing and information 
on the relationship between creativity, play, wellbeing and health.



EARLY REGISTRATION & BOOKING FOR WORKSHOP IS ESSENTIAL
both to ensure workshop is feasible and because number of places is limited.
Non-returnable: 
DEPOSIT to secure place €50.        PAYMENT IN FULL by 15TH Sept.
TO BOOK    Mail creativewellbeingsl@gmail.com



It's never too late to discover meaningful creative activity 
and the benefits of flow




 






Saturday, 10 May 2025

Washing Windows V Eds. Alan Hayes & Nuala O'Connor. Readings

POETRY, TODAY Sat 10th May, 2025 in Dunlaoghaire 2pm Lexicon Level 3 I'll be reading my poem included in Washing Windows V 'Women Revolutionise Irish Poetry 1975 - 2025' (Arlen House '25) alongside others included in this extensive anthology The book was reviewed in Stokestown last Saturday and officially launched and celebrated in Books Upstairs last night. Others simultaneously reading from it at 2pm at Waterford Gallery of Art today. Editors are Nuala O'Connor and Alan Hayes. Look out for it! Next week readings in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop FRI 16th May 6pm and Ennistymon, Salmon The Salmon Bookshop & Literary Centre SAT 17th 2pm. Deansgrange Library 28th May 6pm.... Belfast, and Manhattan (June) Manhattan, London, Irish Literary Society, September

Monday, 25 November 2024

January 2025 Out, About & In Touch. Creative Wellbeing Course now booking. Here's how the Autumn course is going. creativewellbeingsl@gmail.com.

Having enjoyed rising to the challenge and, particularly, meeting and working with the participants I've been wondering whether to give it another go in 2025.  

I've reviewed our Autumn Course to date (see below) and convinced myself. 

The next, 2025 course, will start in Glasthule starting January 28th. 
To enquire and/or book you can mail me at creativewellbeingsl@gmail.com 



The 2024 Autumn course

A warm welcome promised, we began with talking about how taking a different perspective on something - whether in art, writing or in thinking about a challenge faced - can bring about a new beginning.

Resistance, along with the fear of daring, to be creative has probably been the most recurring theme with the group allowing us to air and counteract underlying socialised out-of-date mores.

The synergy of being in a group with this focus has confirmed that people find it difficult to admit to/ start out with and/or to maintain commitment to keeping the creative muscles flexed.

Themes

We've explored the value of doodling, painting on stones (with some gorgeous results) and mark-making - in relation to early art, having fun and as a core artistic tool.

Sharing memories of funtimes, knowing that such memories get the happy hormones flowing.

Firstly acknowledging the need to grieve in life, the inevitability of general anxiety and times of unhappiness, as well as more intense related experiences that can benefit from additional help, being creative in how we approach life, difficulties and our own creativity is invaluable. Sometimes particularly in how we connect and re-connect with others.

Out, About & In Touch. On the current Creative Wellbeing twelve week course we've also looked at Design Thinking. We've read and written some poetry. Interesting pieces have been shared based on memoir. Incidentally most of the writing has been inspiring to read. The art of knowing, based on a book of the same name and the power of following the process in art-making - similarly inspired by a book - both from renowned art therapists are up next and then we'll pull it all together as we review and that's it for this year.

History

As a retired psychotherapist, with a few poetry books under my belt, and helped by an art therapist when undergoing treatment for early cancer over a decade ago, I wanted to combine experience from all three in facilitating this course.

After initial free Taster sessions held in Walters Bar-Venue in Dunlaoghaire in the Spring we are on week nine of the first twelve week course now having found a Glasthule venue.

Personal Path, post pandemic, to coming to facilitate a course on Creative Wellbeing & Mental Health

My own first step was to join a weekly Writers group in Wicklow town, advertised for chat as well as encouraging writing. Encouraged, my second was to re-join Toastmasters (word related events clearly tend to draw me) - having left the Corrib Club in Oranmore over a decade ago. 

Finding a voice again there, I thought I'd give a go at facilitating this course, the idea for which had been bubbling on the back burner of my mind for a long itme - since in fact, the time when I began facilitating Having the Conversation - About ... through sharing relevant poems. Conversations I facilitated at festivals in Galway. One of those poetry related Conversation groups in my former neighbourhood allows me to continue to visit there twleve years later with enormous pleasure and to my astonishment.

Enjoy creative advent, solstice and festive seasons!

Susan

email: creativewellbeingsl@gmail.com



Tuesday, 30 July 2024

 PLEASE NOTE

My profile picture, similar to the one currently on this blog, has been purloined on Instagram to an account that spells my name alternatively followed by a number. My own instagram account with the same photo is susanahlindsay.