All 4 entries tagged Icw2007-8

Dave Eggers' Short Shorts

Writing about web page http://books.guardian.co.uk/shortshortstories/0,,1178980,00.html

Here's the link to Dave Eggers' short stories. These were serialised in The Guardian Weekend magazine a few years ago, but are still available online.

They've since been edited and published by Penguin as part of their 70 years series of booklets.

Also have a read of 'Short and Sweet', his article about them.

George Ttoouli : 16 Jan 2008 14:40 |  Tags: Dave Eggers Icw2007-8 Short Short Stories |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Noise Reduction

David invited me to talk to the current Practice of Poetry group a couple of weeks ago, along with Sholeh Johnston. Towards the end he asked us to invent some rules for a poem that the class could write for the following week. One of the of the ones I threw at them was to disallow sibilants throughout.

This came from some recent delving I was doing, but I hadn't actually written a successful piece using that rule at the time, I'd just been gestating. So here's a draft. Feedback welcome.

Noise Reduction

To begin: the white gap of twilight,
a military parliament, a known tyranny,
Mao meaning enemy in dialect,
in any foreign tongue. The filtered
trafficking, a report that cannot reach you.

Metal pouring through the market,
forging; like molten ore hardening in your ear,
on your tongue, one line bartered:
a monarchy of trade, economic terror.

And brother to brother, robed in the boulevard,
what you held in over coffee in the harbour gone
free now and the middle ground greyed by reporting.

A wave-curved python looped in the den,
tuning and recording. A thing unutterable
between the alley and the apartment
where tapping and planning occurred.

And then: by the white gap of twilight
A truncated achievement.
The wave-curved python launched,
even the village grain made bloody in retort.

Back home like a golden era.
In awe of the mountain labyrinth left behind
and murder cawing in the media,
a flotilla leaving by twilight.

George Ttoouli : 15 Oct 2007 01:01 |  Tags: Icw2007-8 Noise Oulipo Poetry Practiceofpoetry Reduction |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

Hari Kunzru links

Writing about web page http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1089901,00.html

So here are the two links from class this week.

[It occurs to me that if you're in the poetry seminar group at the moment, a lot of this may not make sense right now.]

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1089901,00.html

And in his own words:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1090959,00.html

My own feeling is that people need to know when to separate and combine their writing and their ideologies. Sometimes, the stories that occur to you, or 'cull you from the world' to paraphrase Arundhati Roy, are ideology-driven anyway. Andrew Miller said that his writing comes from a sickness, or problem, with himself, or his place in the world. (Oxygen is about the apathy of middle class English writers like himself.)

But when the writing isn't inherently driven by ideology, should it be forced to fit into that straightjacket? As Keats wrote in a letter, poetry should not have "a palpable design" on the reader. But in some cultures, poetry is for political expression, primarily - I'm reminded of an excellent (now out of print, I think) Heinemann African poetry anthology, which demonstrated this to me.

I'm not trying to provide the answers, just opening doors.

G

George Ttoouli : 12 Oct 2007 19:19 |  Tags: Harikunzru Icw2007-8 Immigration Politics Writing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Untitled entry

Welcome to Introduction to Creative Writing EN261.

Here is the link to the module page:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/undergraduate/current/modules/fulllist/special/en261_introtocw/

The link to the 'Guide to the Essay' appears to be broken at the moment, but I will root about in the interweb and see where it got to. If any of the information on this page seems confusing or wrong, let me know.

Blogs can do wonderful things. Here is one I like muchly:

http://3by3by3.blogspot.com

George Ttoouli : 08 Oct 2007 08:00 |  Tags: Admin Icw2007-8 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem