Sensorial Witnessing: An Exploration of Voice, Reading, Performance
Explore and experiment with your voice to develop new forms of embodied writing and performance.
This practical session follows on from Sophie Seita’s recent workshop, Experimental Voice Work: Embodied Writing, by delving deeper into areas already explored in the first gathering: texture, sensation, attention, ease, surprise. Attendance at the first workshop isn’t a requirement, but it’s worth noting that this workshop will be less introductory and more focused, allowing for more time and space to really dive into a specific embodied experience. So, a certain level of familiarity with embodied techniques of any kind is recommended.
Throughout the day, we will follow poetic sound and movement prompts and gain deeper understanding of their effects on our bodies, and ask ourselves how we might create conditions for these somatic experiences to be accessible again in other contexts (in performance, in professional settings, in the studio, in writing) without congealing into a fixed state or trick or compensatory pattern. We will also ask what needs to be unlearned, which habits need to be let go of, and how new neural and cellular pathways can be forged. How poetic language can allow us to tap into or lead to physiological realities and realisations otherwise occluded by attempts of control or known structures of thought.
We will give special attention to how we might maintain sensory alertness in performative settings, when old habits are bound to kick in. All participants are invited to bring along a particular piece that they’d like to explore sonically or in an embodied fashion in a small group setting. This could be a poem or prose piece to be read out loud, a performance, a movement piece/dance piece, a song or other sound work.
The workshop will also be a space for peer support and tender but sensorially sharp witnessing. Part of the session will be conducted as a whole group (max 14 people), and the other part will be done in pairs. The practice draws on a number of embodied techniques but mostly on the Lichtenberger Method in Applied Vocal Physiology. Ultimately, this session is set up for non-hierarchical learning and sharing, so bringing other approaches to the table is very much encouraged.
1 x full day session, running 10.30am–4.30pm (BST), on 21 June 2025. This course will take place at The Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton St, London WC2H 9BX.
To apply for a concession rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to [email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here. More information about how our In-Person Courses work can be found on the In-Person Courses page. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected].
Image credit: @Richard Horvath
About Sophie Seita 
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The workshop arises out of Sophie Seita’s current artist research project Touching Language, which explores experimental queer writing in and as performance in the visual arts, through collaborative research, multi-sensory practice, creative access, and pedagogical experiments.
Sophie Seita is a London-based artist and researcher whose work swims in the muddy waters of language and is informed by deep listening, critical opacity, queer abstraction, and a playfulness that’s both rigorous and pleasurable. Often working with others across disciplines, she’s expanding and deepening her ongoing intersectional queer collaboration with the musician and conductor Naomi Woo, to give voice to untold queer archives, as part of The Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions. Most recently, this took the form of a fictional gardening talk show called bingenTV; a solo exhibition at Mimosa House; a zine called The Minutes; and a multi-layered encounter in the wetlands of Xochimilco, Mexico City, in collaboration with the organisation Ruta del Castor, the artist Carolina Caycedo, and numerous international artists, activists, farmers, and researchers. Seita teaches in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, and currently holds the 2023-2024 Werner Düttmann Fellowship at Akademie der Künste, Berlin, where she is developing a series of graphic scores and textile pieces. Her latest book is Lessons of Decal, a collection of experimental essays, out now with the 87 Press.
"This is the first time I have felt confident enough to share my poetry in public. I now have a much greater sense of self-efficacy in my poetry and a greater commitment to developing my craft."
Jaws at 50 (‘You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Class’)
Introduction to Visual Poetry: Poetics of the Possible
The Poetics of Latin American Resistance: “Yo Vengo a Ofrecer Mi Poema / I Come to Offer My Poem”