As a Freelance Writer I get the chance to work with many different people and organisations to create imaginative writing adventures!

Developing Your Creative Practice: Over the Page – writing lyrical storytelling for performance.

I’m over the moon to announce that I received a coveted Developing Your Creative Practice award from Arts Council England. This support will enable me to blend together my background in writing spoken word and theatre and create a new form – lyrical writing for performance. This form is inspired and informed by Irish and Yorkshire oral storytelling practices, that form my heritage as a half Irish, half Yorkshire writer.

The Plimsoll Line: A Commission from Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council to create poetry public art.

One of my most proud moments as a writer was being asked to write a poem to celebrate Redcar’s maritime heritage that is now set in stone, as a large scale public art installation in Redcar’s High Street.

I designed an engagement programme with school children, writers and members of the public to tell the seafaring story of my hometown Redcar and it’s connection to The Plimsoll Line. Samuel Plimsoll was staying in Redcar when he witnessed the loss of ships and life to the dangerous overloading of cargo on what were deemed ‘coffin ships.’ Working with these groups helped me shape an understanding of what was important to people about Redcar and this informed the scope, content and form of the final poem which you can hear here.

Change the Story

Change the Story is a large scale NHS creative commission involving me as a creative writer and lead visual artist Josie Brookes. We are working with five groups of people across the Tees Esk and Wear Valley who need to build resilience, problem solving, social coherence and agency through creativity. This extraordinary project is responsively designed for the needs of each group, and our creative outcomes so far involve animations, collage, story blankets, clay mobile sculpture and incredible stories. Working with these groups we are pioneering a people led process that interweaves the creative power of writing and the visual arts to create a playful space of escape where restorative care can take place.

Arctic Expressions – Visiting Writing for British Museum and Kirkleatham Museum Collaboration

July 2025

Kirkleatham Museum is my hometown museum, full of memories of family day outs and incredible projects that tell local stories. This year I got to work with a group of Year 7 art and geography students to find creative ways to engage with the Arctic Expressions collections. I devised a handbook that invited students to be curious, respond with associated words, emotions, memories to contemporary Inuit artwork and create their own Guardian’s of the Climate. What a joy?

Rebecca Swift Foundation – Creative Associate Appointment!

March 2025

I was absolutely over the moon to become a Creative Associate representing Newcastle for Rebecca Swift! It’s one of my heroine organisations! I’ve delivered a two part Writing Retreat and want to hear from poets in the region about what you want and need for your writing to thrive!

The Rebecca Swift Foundation (RSF) has announced the appointment of three Creative Associates who will be representing the charity in Newcastle, Wolverhampton, and London as part of its Arts Council England-funded ‘By Poets, For Poets’ programme.  

Carmen Marcus (Newcastle), Kuli Kohli (Wolverhampton), and Tolu Agbelusi (London) join the charity as it expands and develops its UK-wide Women Poets’ Network, with over 1,000 women poets signed up so far. These new posts have been designed to encourage in person networking and relationship-building, offering peer to peer support through a series of workshops and seminars. The live sessions will bring together women poets, identifying their needs within each region, developing their skills, supporting their wellbeing and celebrating their creativity. Findings from the Creative Associates will be presented at a Symposium to mark the end of the 2-year programme, in 2026. 

Carmen Marcus, RSF Creative Associate for Newcastle, said: 

“I’m the first Rebecca Swift Foundation’s Creative Associate for Newcastle! I’m saying this out loud, with equal parts excitement and fear. Pride because the Foundation exemplifies to me what real nurturing peer-to-peer support looks like. Fear because I know what is at stake.  Writing alone doesn’t work. It’s so vulnerable and exposing. There are so many permissions needed. So many internal, industry and practical blocks we need a network to break. And – there are so many routes to making work now – it’s too confusing to navigate alone. I am excited to start on this journey with the team to shape a cracking network for northern women poets together!” 

River of Hope

October 2024 – Summer 2025

I am the consultant poet working in partnership with Stockton Council and Stockton International Riverside Festival. This project will create words and images all about the mystery and power of the River Tees with participating schools to go on display at Stockton International Riverside Festival!

https://www.facebook.com/events/6303412823117160/

Women*-centred workshops in June

Story Power with Carmen Marcus
Thursday 13th June, 6-8pm
Drake the Bookshop, Silver Street, Stockton: TICKETS
Online via Zoom: TICKETS

In this workshop we will explore new and old ways to write about nature that generates protection for our wild spaces through story. We will look at ways to write that shift our relationship with nature, that put the wild front and centre, give it a voice, combine mythical and scientific understanding to create a braided story that goes beyond nature as a metaphor and seeks to protect through story.

Never Tell the Same Story Twice
Saturday 15th June, 2pm-5pm
ARC Stockton : TICKETS

Oral stories have an opening and closing ritual, that they are adapted and personalised, and the tale more than anything is a spirit net, a way to carry stories between cultures and generations. Story is designed to be adapted, to shift, to be moulded into new meaning by each teller. Join Carmen as she shares the principles of oral storytelling, adaptation and ritual. 

Costs
Our workshop programme is subsidised by Arts Council England. Please choose EITHER a free ticket OR a ticket+donation if you’re able to support our Future Fund.

About Carmen
Carmen Marcus is a published author, poet, playwright, creative facilitator, and mentor. As the daughter of a Yorkshire fisherman and Irish chef her writing brings together the practical and the magical. Her play AND THE EARTH OPENED UP UNDER HER won the Faber New Play Award 2023. Having made the journey from council estate to the bookshelves Carmen is dedicated to supporting working class writers to tell their stories. Carmen is currently reading for a PhD at the University of Teesside which asks – what is the role and responsibility of the storyteller within the community. 

*The TWP is an intersectional feminist organisation and welcomes trans sisters and agender/non-binary poets who are comfortable in woman-centred spaces.

The Railway Troll

So proud of this poem commissioned by Storylines. You can see it at Marske by the Sea train station. I’ve always believed in Railway Trolls! Watch out for them beyond the tracks!

Songs and Stories Under a Redcar Sky November 2023

In the autumn of 2023 I got to be lead writer on a project so very close to my heart. The mission – work with the people of Redcar to tell their stories of the sea to be performed by professional actors at a huge and mighty celebration. As a Redcar Lass, who was brought up on the windswept stories of this seaside town – I leapt at the chance. I worked with a group of emerging writers – we delved into the incredible theatrical history of Redcar, we used the past as a jumping off point into fiction, the work was compassionate, warm, beautiful. I loved this project so much.

I loved every part of my involvement with UaRS. I have never seen anything like this in Redcar so I am grateful for being part of it. So many activities are put on during the day but I work so can never attend. Being held on an evening was so important. I would love to see more and would be happy to be part of a local group to ensure we get more opportunities like this in our town.

UaRS Participant

Storylines with Citizen Songwriters: Making conversations with passengers into Poetry, Summer 2023

Storylines felt like a destined project with Citizen Songwriters. Long ago when I wrote How Saints Die on the commute between Saltburn and Durham I wondered – why can’t this be a job, being a resident writer on a train, just travelling up and down the line, looking out the window and writing. Then along came the Storylines project – would you like to have conversations with people on the train and then turn those conversations into poems to celebrate 200 years of passenger rail? Are you kidding! Obviously I did it. And my son, a huge train enthusiast was so very impressed that my job was to write on the train! It was a glorious project filled with funny and tender conversations with folk on the train, hearing about their hopes, dreams and losses. I got to perform with other train writers in the autumn and the poems I wrote will be appearing at platforms near you!

Lemon Tops and Lobster Pots: Creative Producer for Kirkleatham Museum, Summer – Autumn 2023

Kirkleatham Museum were inspired by my audio-visual podcast and photography exhibition The Catch, Redcar’s fishing story past and present in 2021 in collaboration with Tees Valley Arts and photographer Kev Howard. I’m a fisherman’s daughter, and sadly lost my dad when I was just 19 years old. I grew up with my father’s stories of the sea, wind-lashed rescues, protective sea gods, I owe my love of story to him. So when the museum asked me to develop a creative engagement programme with the public to help people to connect to their exhibition of all things by the sea – I had to! I was taken into the treasure house at the museum, that holds their own collection of all things sea related, and most especially the fishing gear! I knew this was going to have to be a family project, so I roped in my sister and cousin, to share their stories of fishing craft, methods, myths and superstitions. We created the interpretation material, advised on the recreation of a traditional bait house and put our hears and souls to the work. I also devised a programme of workshops for schools, families and a fisherman’s talk charting the changes in fishing craft and method and the current vulnerabilities. Recordings of the talks and oral history recordings will be available soon.

BEACH – The Story of Redcar’s Fossils Autumn 2023

This autumn I got the chance to work with Dr Liam Herringshaw in an incredible arts-science cross over activity. BEACH brings together artists and scientists to deepen our understanding of Redcar’s fossil coast. My role was to work with the public to create a myth for the beautiful and plentiful gryphea or Devil’s Toenails that populate Redcar’s rocks.

Aunt Pythia’s Peculiar Pet is an online storytelling programme for 9 – 12 year olds for Halloween designed in partnership with National Literacy Trust. I worked with a brilliant creative team: Filmmaker Laura Degnan, Illustrator Lizzie Lovejoy and puppet maker extraordinaire Kim McDermottroe to create this story prompt activity for budding young writers.