Join us in person and online for this year's Metaphors for a Black Future!
This event is open to Black writers in Scotland at all levels of experience.
All SBWN events will adhere to our Safer Spaces Policy. You can learn more about our policy here.
Metaphors has always been about making and protecting space for writers to experiment and take a break from expectations of excellence. The programme has intentionally avoided craft workshops or genre specifics, wanting instead to encourage participants to find their own flow and loosen their idea of what they do and don’t do. While staying true to nourishing writers and supporting creative growth, the 2025 edition of Metaphors does a bit of a 180. This year is all about giving ourselves permission to be good, to welcome excellence when it comes.
loose ends: explorations in diasporic writing craft
writing ‘with’ and the practice of permission
with Foluke Taylor
Join us for the first loose ends gatherings – sessions exploring diasporic writing craft, these through Foluke Taylor’s Unruly Therapeutic. Together, we’ll spend time thinking around and beyond:
- writing with others
- cultivating self-permission
- citation practice
- unruliness & errantry in writing
- theorising our own approaches
- opacity
No prior knowledge of these ideas is needed. We’ll be learning and exploring together in a relaxed, supportive space.
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Reading Group:
monday 8th december, 6-8pm
MILK, 378 cathcart road, glasgow, g42 7df
A small, cosy in-person reading group where we’ll look at selected excerpts from Unruly Therapeutic and discuss Foluke’s approach to writing – what stands out, what resonates, and what we can take into our own work. This session sets the ground for our conversation with Foluke on Saturday, so if you can join both, it will deepen the experience.
There will be soup, bread (including GF), biscuits and hot drinks.
All welcome whether or not you managed the reading – just come as you are.
Online (Zoom)
This 1.5–2 hour online session includes:
- reflections from Foluke on writing Unruly Therapeutic and diasporic writing craft
- a writing exercise
- Q&A building from Monday’s discussion
- a second writing exercise
- sharing + closing reflections
The two sessions are designed to speak to each other — attending both is encouraged, but not required.
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(by & for black writers)
In these first ‘loose ends’ gatherings*, exploring diasporic writing techniques, we’ll be focused on Unruly Therapeutic by Foluke Taylor. We’ll think around and beyond:
- writing with others
- cultivating self-permission
- citation practice
- unruliness & errantry in writing
- theorising our own approaches, and
- opacity
These don’t need to be ideas you are already familiar with. We will be exploring and learning together.
*There will be further sessions in 2026 learning from more authors, details to follow.
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Reading Materials
You can buy the book here: https://housmans.com/product/unruly-therapeutic-black-feminist-writings-and-practices-in-living-room/
Please read or skim if you can — noticing what resonates, confuses, or stays with you.
There are no right or wrong responses.
(Please don’t share the PDF beyond the group.)
A short summary of key ideas from the reading group will be shared between sessions.
Who it’s for
These gatherings are by and for Black writers, or Black people interested in writing of any kind. Feel free to share with anyone who fits this and might want to join.
If you’d like to join or have any questions, email martha.adonai.williams@gmail.
Organisers
This event is organised by Martha Williams & members of the Saturday Morning Writers Group, in collaboration with Scottish BPOC Writers Network.
Future loose ends gatherings exploring additional authors will continue in 2026.
Access
- There will be soup & bread, hot drinks & biscuits for our in person evening session. You’re welcome to bring your own food/drinks if preferred.
- MILK is wheelchair accessible and warm with a range of seating options.
- A limited number of bursaries are available for attendees:
- Travel: up to £50 per session – please use public transport unless taxi is a disability requirement and send us a copy of your receipts
- Carer/childcare: £30 per session (counts as income to HMRC)
- Data: £8 per online session
- Please contact us at scottishbpocwriters@gmail.com if you would like more information.
- A limited number of bursaries are available for attendees:
- Please share any other access requirements with us.
About the facilitators
Martha Adonai Williams is a writer, facilitator, producer, community organiser, black feminist and friend. Her practice departs to and returns from black feminist world-making, always, with regular layovers in front of trash tv or in the garden. Her work considers the wilderness and margins as sites of resistance, refusal and homecoming. She works with writing and storytelling as therapeutic tools and as methods for community building. She curates SBWN’s Metaphors for a Black Future programme.
Foluke Taylor is a therapist*writer, author, and co-founder/director of Protect Black Women UK. She is an accredited practitioner with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and currently a doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her research focuses on Black feminisms, creative writing, and abolitionist world-building, bringing them together to engage Black feminist poetics in an exploration of therapeutic possibility.
Foluke works with artists (including practitioners of therapeutic arts), researchers and activists transnationally. This has included performance installations across Britain and Europe as part of an ongoing collaboration on Dr Barby Asante’s Declaration of Independence and within the film ‘daughter(s) of diaspora’ by Black-feminist artist-researcher Dr Nydia Swaby. Convinced of the importance of spaces that nurture emergent formations, Foluke is a big fan of dancefloors, living rooms, and kitchen tables.
Foluke is author of Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room (2023, W.W. Norton New York, London). Other publications include, ‘A Note From the Annotator (when the reading kills you)’ in Slow Technology Reader: A Tool for Shaping Divergent Futures (2025, valiz NL); ‘Lively up we self: A portal, some letters, and a black feminist chorus’ (with Gail Lewis) in Black women, trauma and therapy: Revolutionising therapeutic thought and practice (2025, PCCS Books London); ‘Re-imagining the space and context for a therapeutic curriculum—a sketch’ (with Robert Downes) in White Therapies + Black Identities (2021, PCCS Books); ‘Otherwise: Writing Unbearable Encounters Through the Register of Race’ (2021, LIRIC); and ‘Black Paranormal: A Playlist’ in What is Normal: Psychotherapists Explore the Question (2020, Karnac Books).