All 5 entries tagged Creativewriting

Two Forthcoming Events

Firstly (this is off-campus, so not compulsory! but will be a lot of fun):

Sunday 5th October 2008

Warwick Poetry with the Laureate
(Book Launch Event)

2.00pm – 3.00pm
The Coach House, Warwick Castle

Free

This year’s retiring Warwick Poet Laureate, Jane Holland, reads some locally-commissioned poems, plus extracts from her exciting new Warwick Castle project, launching today from Nine Arches Press. Book-signing to follow the event.

A true craftswoman … at the heart of the English lyric tradition.
Fiona Sampson: editor of Poetry Review

(http://ninearchespress.com/events.html)

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And secondly, from Michael Hulse:

Dear colleagues, dear students,

I'm very glad to announce the first in an occasional series of Warwick Review readings, by writers associated with The Warwick Review.

Novelist Tim Parks will be reading for us on Thursday 9 October, at 4 p.m. in the Writers' Room, Capital Centre.

Tim Parks is among the most highly acclaimed contemporary British novelists, and returns to Warwick to read from his new novel, Dreams of Rivers and Seas, just published by Harvill Secker. Among his other novels are the painful and powerful Europa and, most recently, Cleaver. Tim has also written illuminating books about Italy, where he lives, and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. And, of course, he is a contributing editor of The Warwick Review.

It would be good if you could find time to help us welcome Tim back to Warwick. I'll look forward to seeing you there,

Michael Hulse

George Ttoouli : 02 Oct 2008 17:48 |  Tags: Creativewriting Events |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Regenerating L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

Writing about web page http://zimbabwe.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=5748&x=1

"The Renaissance DIALOGUE was practiced in meetings of writers, artists and scientists in an attempt to create a humanist world.

"For example in remote places in the Toscana in Italy, and besides drinking, eating and making love, they engaged in controversial discussions about everything, and were completely satisfied with a situation that did not aim at achieving a consensus about ideas, issues and theories. Everything was open for discussion, and through this openness, a temporary closeness could exist, but not vice versa. They produced no closed and thus restricted systems – they were the outsiders – but at the same time practices in a system – being insiders – but of a special kind. But there was a rule: one person present was chosen and had to remain sober in order to write the protocol of the dialogues – as did the individuals who chose to write the protocol of Dambudzo’s dialogues. This chosen writer produced a system which could only be a glimpse of the non-system as dialogue, but should be seen to be just as polyvalent and multivocal as the DIALOGUE itself. Thus the DIALOGUE is both the condition of art – as non-system and of science – as system. Today we see a dialogue as a condition of postmodernism."

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E is useless without a social context; hence:

"L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=R=Y was not simply a movement to bring renewed interest to language, but to the structures and codes of language: how ideas are represented and formulated to transmit ideas, thoughts, and meaning...

"L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=R=Y also recognized that language is political. In the same way that American farmers hid behind tree trunks and took pop shots at British soldiers who stood in formation in open fields during the revolutionary war, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=S fractured the language in an attempt to wage their own rebellious assault against the social and political structure inherent in the Imperial force of the English language. In doing this, the entire reading process was overhauled, with the reader of this type of poetry forever changed in the way that he or she encounters text of any type." (source)

Hence Dambudzo Marechera. A D=I=A=L=O=G=U=E P=O=E=T.

George Ttoouli : 30 Jan 2008 11:07 |  Tags: Bettina Schmidt Creativewriting Dambudzo Marechera Modernism |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Bus journeys

I've seen a couple of decent posts/assignments about buses. A great place to harvest dialogue.

Thought I would relate a story about a chap who got on the bus last night as I was making my way home.

There were two of us already on and we were about about 4 stops from the terminal in a north London suburb. (Yes, OK, Finchley. The cheap end.) We were sitting downstairs, near the back, myself and another bloke, across the aisle from each other. Both of us minding our own and staring out of windows.

A bloke in his mid-twenties clambered aboard and looked at both of us, then clocked the other guy, making an expression as if he knew him, or as if the guy owed him money. Or perhaps he was just trying to solve simultaneous equations in his head. Either way, I couldn't help staring as he walked right up to the other guy and sat down next to him. Unnerving when there are so many empty seats around. I found myself staring, just in case he started a fight (I'd just done a jiu jitsu class on the weekend and had had a few drinks, so I was feeling abnormally macho).

The conversation was thankfully benign.

"Scuse me, mate, I was just looking over and thought you'd be the kind of geezer that couldn't refuse to help a mate in need. See -"

"No, sorry."

"I've been making my way home and it's all late and I'm a bit of a way from home, so you know, I really could do with 48p."

48p?! There had to be some great reasoning behind that figure.

"No sorry, excuse me this is my stop."

"Go on mate, you could help a mate in need!" (What a cockney diamond geezer. Only think missing was the green face paint and polo monocle.) 

But 48p! Didn't the other guy want to hear it? Sadly not. He reached over, pushed the bell and escaped. At which point the weirdo looked over and moved right across to sit next to me.

Sadly, the pitch was a little bit lacklustre second time around and he didn't give a reason for wanting 48p. But he was definite about the amount.

I wanted to say in response:

"Actually mate, I'm glad you came over to talk to me. See, I'm having a bit of a problem myself. I could really do with some money for the bus, so I can get home tonight. Yeah, and clothes, I don't have any at all, so I could quite do with some money for some. And it's my mum's birthday soon and I need to buy her a decent present. Oh, yeah, and I could quite do with a holiday in the Caribbean in December - I hear we're going to have a fairly rough winter and I really ought to get out of the country to somewhere hot. So do you think you could spare about £1251?"

But it was my stop next, so I didn't get to avail him of my plans. Worst part was when I was crossing the road and looked back at the bus stop. Despite the crap weather and it being 1am, he'd stepped off the bus at the same time as me to wait for the next one. No doubt to ask a few more people for his 48p. I almost went back, but I figured he was just too damn weird. I mean,what was the 48p for exactly?

George Ttoouli : 22 Nov 2007 08:00 |  Tags: 48P Buses Creativewriting Eavesdropping |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ceryneian Hinds

Writing about 'The Creative Writing Industry' or The Company of Wolves from David Morley

Reading David's post, it's good to see him tackling the issue head on. I've asked several colleagues what they think the 'purpose' of creative writing workshops is in the past and there's a kind of mysticism around the subject that I'd normally associate with the Magic Circle. One response I had after probing too deep was a slightly oblique poem.

But this is kind of the first year when I've felt like I've had a handle on what I'm doing. I.e what I think can't be taught in the subject and by inference, an idea of what can. Interesting what David says:

I think creative writing can be taught most effectively when its students have some talent and vocation for it.

What is this elusive 'it' though? Not how to write creatively, in my book. Students don't learn a talent for writing in the classroom. They learn that back home, at a desk, writing. You have to be writing to improve your writing ability, else you're not failing at it, you're only talking about failing. So getting better at talking.

You can perhaps equip yourself for the vocation in the classroom as well. But this is the theory behind the actuality. For all the talk of the 'practical' elements of creative writing teaching, you won't learn to skydive without a parachute and a plane.

To go sideways with this: I'm a firm subscriber to Arundhati Roy's statement that "stories cull writers from the world" and not the other way around. Writing a class exercise won't prepare you for the real business of the story that takes you over, the one that "demands to be written" (an over-used phrase, but it suits my purpose). These are the stories that make writing careers, that create the value of a writer, at least a literary one, if I can get away with that distinction.

And anything else is flexing - to quote Lewis Carroll (with thanks to Julia Forster's book on Muses):

If you sit down, unimpassioned and uninspired, and tell yourself to write for so many hours, you will merely produce... some of that article which fills, so far as I can judge, two-thirds of most magazines - most easy to write, most weary to read - men call it "padding", and it is, to my mind, one of the most detestable things in modern literature.

Hear hear. If only more writers took the time to gestate, live in the world, let the stories come to them. Although to counter myself I should add another useful bit of advice (though I've forgotten the source): It's always better to be at your desk writing when inspiration comes than it is to be out and about doing something else. Otherwise you miss the story. Students on a course may not meet the story they should be writing. It might take years before the right story comes along. Not writing doesn't help the process. But I'm digressing too far.

What can be taught? (And I should stress I'm still working my way through David's book.) At the moment, I'm gravitating towards eunoia. Beautiful thinking. I'm trying to impart a mindset, an energy and a passion for the writing and the vocation. The classroom is becoming a salespitch, of sorts, or perhaps a more hallowed place, in which an ideology is offered: it is good to write and rewrite; it is as good, perhaps better, to read, and widely; but above all, it's important to cultivate your engagement with the world and the way you reflect on the world. It sets humans apart from other animals (the jury's out on cats, though).

And after that, I'd concur with David:

If a teacher can shape the talent and steer that vocation, and the students enjoy the shaping and steering—then I think creative writing should be taught as a craft.

And, steering by example, equip a student with the skills to steer themselves.

George Ttoouli : 21 Nov 2007 08:00 |  Tags: Creativewriting Icw Teaching The Practice Of Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

NaNoWriMo

Writing about web page http://www.nanowrimo.org/

I've been in two minds about this since I heard about it. On the one hand, it's a good way to get the ink flowing, if you're that way inclined. On the other, I don't know that the reams of blather produced qualify as a useful stage on the way to creating something you should inflict on other people.

One way to find out, I suppose.

Starts 1st November.

George Ttoouli : 29 Oct 2007 08:00 |  Tags: Creativewriting Logorrhea Madnesses Nationalnovelwritingmonth |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem