Expressive Writing

with David McLoghlin

Facilitator and Teacher of Creative Writing

in Business, University and Community Settings

 

My Services

I work with groups in a variety of contexts, using exemplary pieces of writing as prompts to spark students’ own writing. I can design classes to support team building, and workshops that benefit individual and organisational well being. My classes are flexible and can be tailored to your organisational needs. For example, I have taught as part of Empathy Week to assist secondary school students in reflecting on compassion and community; taught poetry and short prose to long-term care patients in a public hospital in New York; and designed classes according to the UN’S sustainable development goals. In terms of the last example, to make these sometimes abstract pillars tangible, I used photographs, and poems, to focus on three aspects: (1) migration, specifically migrants travelling on the “train of death“ through Mexico; (2) racism via the lens of traffic stops in the USA, and (3) war via images from the Irish War of Independence. I am happy to discuss designing a class or series of classes for your team.

  • Identify common goals and values, lessons learned, ambitions and future planning via collective poems, writing prompts and games.

  • Here we use writing and listening to each other's writing and story telling to explore

    • The art of vulnerability

    • collaborating via listening

    • decision making that incorporates everyone's voices in an equitable manner.

  • As we observe nature by writing short poems, we bring ourselves and our environment closer together. As they unite in the text or poem, we can move towards that outcome within ourselves.

  • Free writing and journaling have long been recognised as therapeutic tools in healing from stress and symptoms of burn out. This class assists by helping students find a space to listen to their own voices and return refreshed and sustained from within.

How Expressive Writing Can Benefit Your Employees

Studies consistently show(*) that expressive, or creative, writing has significant health benefits. It can help us to regulate our emotions and our nervous systems, and to regain a sense of clarity, reconnecting us to ourselves and to others. The applications or benefits go beyond the remit of any specific genre.

  • Free writing and journaling help us identify our goals and values, reduce stress, and improve a sense of gratitude.

  • Poetry plays a part in noticing the world around us and our place in it

  • Fiction can help identify the through-lines of the stories we tell ourselves and how they influence our lives.

The benefits are immediately obvious. Whatever helps us as individuals radiates outward into our culture and the wider community. When employees are fully engaged within a workplace culture that nurtures their wellbeing, turnover decreases, institutional knowledge is preserved, and employee ownership grows, enhancing productivity and creating a positive feedback loop. An inclusive, diverse and positive culture foster environments where we feel engaged and motivated in terms of what we can bring to the table. Staff engagement in a creative writing practice can implicitly support this kind of environment.

The workshops that I offer can play an integral part in that leverage. We know the term hygiene as applied to the body, and are beginning to see it linked to sleep (as in, “learn to practice sleep hygiene to establish quality rest”), but at a basic level, establishing a regular writing practice forms part of a psychological hygiene, and can be an essential self-care tool. Writing reaches inwards and outwards – in terms of paying attention to life around us and to the life within us. Writing knits these together, and this connection brings us alive, revitalising us inwardly, helping us to show up and contribute, and grow in courage, vulnerability, leadership and trust.

(*) See “Expressive Writing in Psychological Science” by James W. Pennebaker

Testimonials

  • Kajal Odedra, author of Do Something: Activism for Everyone and Hair/Power: Essays on Control and Freedom.

    “David is a great teacher, he engaged so deeply with our individual work and helped me to see what was working in my pieces and gave great advice for what to do with it next. His vast knowledge of literature meant that he would regularly reference other works that became points of inspiration and helped me to expand my own thinking.”

  • Kathryn Stam, PhD, a Student at the Center for Fiction

    “I have taken many memoir classes, but David’s class was special. He made us comfortable as a group right away. David has a gentle and encouraging manner. He read our work carefully and gave us structural and line edits on two chapters, helping me to solve problems that I had been struggling with for weeks. For anyone who isn't sure what the through-line of their story is, I recommend working with David to find it and help it grow. I am so grateful to him for helping shepherd my work along with such skill and grace.”

  • Scott M. Morris, Author

    “David McLoghlin is an award-winning poet and writer who also happens to be as sharp an editor as you could hope to find. A wordsmith who truly enjoys helping others see their own work through to completion, McLoghlin excels at line editing, with a zeal for helping clients get every word, sentence and comma perfect. Yet he is also a master at figuring out big, structural questions. He is super pleasant to work with, but he is relentless when it comes guiding a project to perfection. You couldn't ask for a better companion when trying to get your work to the next level.”

  • Benjamin Cartwright, poet and winner of the Powder Horn Prize for After Our Departure.

    “I first shared new work with David over a decade ago, and in all the time since he has never let me down as a reader and advisor. He has a keen sense of what individual works need to take them further, and also how to put works together in a collection–culling what doesn’t belong, and arranging what does so the remaining writing is in lively conversation.”

  • Julia Gamolina, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Madame Architect

    “I have so much gratitude to David for this class! This was my first time doing anything of the sort in terms of sharing my work, and David created the safest, most supportive, and encouraging space to do so, and I will always remember this. David also provided the most thoughtful and detailed feedback on my pieces that I can apply to lots of other writing. I recommend David and his workshops most highly!”

  • Richard Prins, Poet, Essayist and Literary Translator, Recently Published in Best American Essays 2024

    “David edited my travel memoir, chapter by chapter, over the course of about nine months. I always anticipated receiving his enlightening, encouraging, and entertaining comments. These included thorough line edits with a poet's sharp eye for language, and probing structural insights that revealed his broad and deep study of the art of the memoir. Looking back at David's comments, I can see how prescient they were. He pointed out what was working best, what I should "lean into"; a year later, a literary scout for a major publisher (whom David put me in touch with) identified those same qualities as among the memoir's strongest elements. In short, it was a great pleasure working with David, and extremely helpful in developing my memoir.”

  • Joyce Cleere Butler

    “David McLoghlin is a fabulous poet. I was part of an online poetry group with him last year and I know my poems improved 100% because of his feedback.”

About Me: My Qualifications and Experience

I am the prize-winning author of three books of poetry, and have been published in anthologies and numerous magazines in the USA and Ireland. I have contributed my writing to film and radio, spoken on podcasts and taught life writing, memoir, fiction, poetry and literature in a number of settings, including the workplace, universities, hospitals, libraries, and national and secondary schools. Organisations I have worked with include

  • Cork County Council (pilot scheme to support employees’ wellbeing through creativity)

  • Coler Specialty Hospital (New York) 

  • University College, Dublin

  • New York University

  • The American College, Dublin

  • Poetry as Commemoration, via UCD library (50 hours of teaching in libraries and schools across Munster)

  • The Center for Fiction (USA, regular teacher via Zoom)

  • Hudson Valley Writers Center (USA, via Zoom)

  • West Cork Literary Festival

  • Culture Night, Fermoy Library (September 2023)

  • Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx (Writer in Residence) 

  • The Unfinished Book of Poetry (mentor)

  • Poetry Ireland’s Writers in Schools initiative (visiting teacher)

  • Cruinniú na nÓg (via Cork County Council and My Creative Wish)

  • The Irish Writers Centre, memoir class (upcoming)

  • The Heritage Council (upcoming) 

  • Mentor with The Munster Literature Centre (upcoming)

  • Thomas McDonagh Hedge School, Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary (upcoming).

I am on the panel of the National Mentoring Programme and was part of Ireland’s first pilot training programme in Social Prescribing for arts facilitators via Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre. I am also a member of a panel of facilitators who deliver workshops for Cork County Council Library and Arts Services, and I regularly consult and mentor individuals and groups in establishing creative writing as a tool to help them grow and find direction in their lives.  I hold a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University, one of the premier creative writing faculties in the field, and an MLitt in Spanish literature from University College, Dublin. 

When it comes to soft skills, I am a deep and active listener, leaving space for students to allow their writing, and their selves, to emerge and play. I am also experienced in helping my students tease out the story they want to tell by discovering associative links and “bread crumbs” within their writing. I trained as a Reiki therapist many years ago, and have an enduring interest in Buddhist literature and meditation (both Zen and Tibetan Buddhism) as well as contemplative prayer, and the therapeutic benefits of writing.

Contact Me to Inquire About Classes in Expressive Writing for Your Team