Creative WritingWorkshops

Christopher Sanderson

PLANS AND HAPPENSTANCE VOLUME 1

Introduction

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These 12 workshops were undertaken in 2010. Six were at Louth Creative Writing and the remainder at Lincoln Creative Writing.

In the workshops the readings are available whereas in this book they are not. The best policy would be to buy the work referred to, in that way the original writers continue to benefit from their work being held up to example. Alternatively, and perhaps equally interesting, and certainly less expensive, would be for you to substitute work from your own library into the exercises.

Either way I hope the workshops give you pleasure, they certainly were pleasurable to undertake for which I thank all my writing friends in Lincoln and Louth.

A longer video is available on youtube. Just search for coastmoor, then Lincoln Creative Writing, or use the link http://youtu.be/n4O-tQvw9G4

Best of luck with your writing.

Christopher SandersonLincolnshire2013

Copyright

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© 2013 Christopher Sanderson

The materials used as examples in the workshops remain copyright of the original authors.

Workshop 1

Origins

A workshop that draws on our reasons for writing

Exploration is one of the beautiful things for a writer to engage in. To talk closely with one other person is a first step to wider sharing. Become two people if you wish to work alone.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. Talk to the person next to you about the first piece of writing that inspired you to write

- What did you want to write about

- Why did you want to write

- Does your writing say anything about you

2. Reverse the process and listen to your partners first experience

- Relate these experiences to the group

Introductions

4

Following in the footsteps of someone whose writing you enjoy is a positive motivator. Feel free to choose your own reference author and poem.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Read the poem by Kit Wright: What I heard on Woman’s Hour

2. Talk about the poem

– The content

– The techniques

– The bits

– The whole

– The message

– The tone

3. On what subject might you write a similar poem, write down 3 or 4

4. Reveal your subjects and choose one

5. Write the first four lines of your poem

Best Practices Abound

5

Your knowledge and thoughts on your infrastructures are a rich source of writing content for you to to restructure. Choose your own place to define or redefine.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Lets talk about origins

2. What in Lincoln defines Lincoln’s origins, write a few notes using

- Buildings

- Institutions

- Social Gatherings

3. What in Lincolnshire suits your individual thoughts of origins, write a few notes using

- Places

- People

- Cultures

- Industries

4. Reveal your notes on Origins

Origins Defined

6

Listen for the male and female tones in the readings, be prepared to write with both these voices. It would be good but not essential to use Calvino.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. Choose a woman to read Italo Calvino’s Cities and Memory 1

- Talk about Calvino’s writing

2. Choose a man to read Italo Calvino Cities and Memory 2

- Talk again about Calvino’s writing

- Focus on the differences in the voices of the writer and the readers

3. Think about all that you have heard or read or thought today. Use any of this to write your own descriptive piece with your defined place as an inspiration

- Reveal your writings

Cities and Memories

7

Chapter 2

Pastoral

A workshop to become at ease with the past, and at one with nature

To move yourself into another’s body; try to feel as they would feel, use all of your imagination to move away from being you before writing from your own perspective.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. Write a description of your idea of the day of a shepherd

- Reveal your description

2. Write a few lines about in what way this is seen as an ideal life

- Reveal your lines

Idealization

9

Words that create peaceful images and softer moods have a magic all of their own. It is worth discovering this poet if you don’t already know him.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Read from Thomas A Clark’s The Hundred Thousand Places

strong hill shapes presiding over pastoral slopes

sheep grazing salmon in pools of clear water

2. Take some of your ideas of the shepherds life and what makes it ideal, use them to write a few verses in the style of Thomas A Clark

- Reveal your verses

The Hundred Thousand Places

10

Writing can be a solitary affair, to embrace solitude write of it that you may share its ambiance and mystery.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Imagine that you are going to live a secluded life, almost as a hermit for two years in a very rural environment

2. What will you take with you

- Write a list

- Reveal your list

3. How will you spend your day

- Do an hourly day diary from waking to sleeping

- Reveal your diary

4. Read from Solitude by Henry D Thoreau

Life in the Woods

11

Peace and calm, or urgency and passion. Without Robertson you might use Hughes and Clark, or better still make up your own pairing.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. Read from Leaving St Kilda by Robin Robertson

2. Compare this poem to Thomas A Clark’s poem

- Pick out a list of words from Robertson’s poem that could be used in a different poem

3. Write that different poem as a sonnet combining Clark’s, Robertson’s and your own ideas

Counterpoint

12

Chapter 3

Light

A workshop that lets varying light give variation to your writing

It would be good to do this exercise in situ so to speak but without the luxury of writing at daybreak, or not having Roger Deakin’s writings at hand, you may have to call on your other histories and imaginations.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. Set yourself in a place at daybreak (imagine a place where you feel safe or frightened), a place where you can observe the sunrise.

- In the thirty minutes that the sun takes to come through write a list of ten things that occur to you as the light rises

- Reveal your chosen place and your reason for its choice

2. Read a piece from Shelter taken from Roger Deakin’s book Wildwood

First Light

14

Details are often what escape our memory. A notebook is more powerful than a camera to record your moments. Pause, catch the detail.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Take yourself out into the countryside. It is noon on a clear bright day, you are at the edge of a field, or in a churchyard.

- Observe as much as you are able

- Write down your observations

- Reveal your observations

2. Still in your chosen place read Mary Oliver’s poem The singular and cheerful life

those princes of everything green- the grasses of which there are truly an uncountable company

3. Write a poem about daybreak & countryside

- Reveal your poem

Full Light

15

Early times forge our core values and our beliefs, they shape the way we view the world. Stretch the past to the present both for yourself and a significant other.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Become a child again. Think of a school trip, and a school teacher

- Write a few lines about that teacher:

- Try to write about what you think they might have done in their retirement

2. Read the extract from the Ladybird book What to Look for in Autumn

3. Put some of this into your lines about your teacher and turn it into a poem

- Reveal the poems

Twilight

16

Take more than one position. Let other peoples opinions and recordings enter into your thought streams.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. Use alternative sources for your writing energy

- Read Denise Levertov’s poem People at Night

A night that cuts between you and you and you and you and you and me : jostles us apart, a man elbowing through a crowd.             We won’t             look for each other, either- wander off, each alone, not looking in the slow crowd.  Among the sideshows

2. Look at the picture opposite of Lincoln at night

- Talk about what the poem and the photograph have in common, and where they are at odds

3. Write a poem about the process of comparison

Night Light

17

Chapter 4

Darkness

A workshop where we lose a little of our sight in order to find our words

Lack of sight brings with it a compensation from our other senses. See what you can feel with diminished sight.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. Where have you been to witness darkness

- List at least five places

2. Reveal

3. Choose one of the places

- List at least ten emotional words that encapsulate that place at the time of darkness

4. Reveal

Witness the Darkness

19

Gamekeepers and forests, cottages abreast with lust. Shivers and moons; let your sensuous energies have their fling.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Read paragraphs 1-3 of page 123 in DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover

- Talk about the passage

2. Introduce some characters into your ‘dark place’

- Reveal your characters

Tales from the Dark Wood

20

When light moves away something else moves in. What fills your minds spaces when you take a sense away.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. A flotation tank is one place to entice sensory depravation.

2. How would you feel, in a place of total darkness, floating in water.

- Write about the fear and the joy of such an experience.

- Write about how you would sell the idea to others

- Reveal your writings

3. Read up on the experience of sensory depravation and floatation tanks

Sensory Deprivation

21

The richness of what might have gone before; search your memories and extrapolate with imagination.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. Read Tourist from Sam Willett’s New Light for the Old Dark

Warsaw, October: rose-madder by four, the soldierly grey boulevards slippery

with tickets to winter. After forty years rebuilding, the Old Town is like this beautiful girl I knew

whose face was wheel-broken in a crash, and remade so well it was hard to say how she

- Talk about the poetry

- Talk about the poet

- How important is the ‘back story’ for a poet

Tales from the Darker Side

22

Chapter 5

Absence

A workshop to make something out of what we are missing

What we draw out from ourselves can become a vehicle for our thoughts of others.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. Read Juan Ramon Jimenez - I am not I

- Talk about the poem

2. Write about the experience of being silent whilst you talk

- Reveal your writings

Absence of Self

24

Strong images free the writer to write with energy and fluency. Be prepared to reach both high’s and low’s.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Think about or imagine someone who you feel is absent in your life

2. Write a description of the person, talk about their features and characteristics

- Reveal your writings

3. Read from Jana Milloy

Writing arouses certain sensibilities that bring about what goes on inside the body, but also, while writing, it is the process whereby self gains access to the exterior. A moment can be reached in the act of writing when one enters the flow of flesh, or the space between self and other...

4. Write about your relationship with the real or imagined person you described, talk about the good and the bad

- Reveal your writings

Absence of Others

25

Go beyond the superficial of you, to feel the emotions of being you, in some of your own chosen challenging situations.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Read or listen to John Clare’s poem I am

- Talk about the poem

2. Write about the experience of being you

- Reveal your writings

Absence or Presence

26

Writings to and from translation offer up opportunities for you to gain a new essence from words.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

Art.4: "The Association, which is non-profit, is engaged in the study and investigation of an activity (passivity) of thought which has so far never existed, at least if related to the fundamental characteristics discovered by us that constitute the scope of the association. Such an activity (passivity) is called Absence. It consists in a new condition of Homo Sapiens whereby an improved, more comprehensive capacity of thought and its higher elaborating system to abstract and establish relational bonds (within and outside the self) bringing about a new way or 'substance' which we have defined 'emptiness' or 'detachment'...http://www.in-absence.org/mediazione/e_mediazione.htm

1. Tidy up this piece of Italian academic writing, try to explain the substance of the text your own words

1. - Reveal your explanation

Absence Thoughts

27

Chapter 6

Character

A workshop where finding characters helps us to find our words

Looking for extremes engages our mind in the process of classification which writers can use throughout their work.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. What do we mean by larger than life characters

- Talk about what we mean by larger than life

2. Write down the names of 3 people you think of as larger than life

- Reveal your chosen characters and explain your reasons for choosing them

3. What makes a character larger than life

- Discuss

Larger than Life

29

Writing notes gives the writer a chance to make mistakes and take risks, to do research and exploration knowing that they have the opportunity to revise or discard them later.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Create your own larger than life character

Introduce your character with a piece of writing

- Make some notes about your character

- Reveal and discuss the notes

2. Put your notes into prose

- Reveal the character

Create a Character

30

Characters come in all shapes and sizes, winners and losers. Follow Bukowski among some of the worlds greatest losers.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Read Charles Bukowski’s poem from the racetrack

he used to sell papers in front: “get your winners! get rich on a dime!” and about the 3rd or 4th race you’d see him rolling in on his rotten board with roller skates underneath. he’d propel himself along on his hands; he just had small stumps for legs

- Talk about the poem

2. Write a losing piece for your character

- Reveal your loser

Worlds Greatest Loser

31

A writer is obliged to read other writers works; be prepared to read from a wide variety of sources.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. Read Mike’s blog entry

At the moment I'm having a rather hard time with everything as it seems. I'm stuck in a situation that I just cannot get out of, a situation that is tearing me apart, leading me to a breakdown that I know is coming. There's nothing that I can do put plead for one person to get off his god damn ass and do something about it before I do breakdown. Thankfully I'm not alone and I have loving care and support, and without it, I definitely would break down for sure.

- Talk about the blog

2. Write an intrinsically downbeat piece for your character

- Reveal your intrinsically downbeat character

Intrinsically downbeat characteristics

32

Chapter 7

Personality

A workshop to put personality & personalities into print

Some stories are already written. The writers task is to find the story and put down the words on the page, to prepare the story for print.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. Read from pages 9-11 of Blake Morrison’s The Justification of Johann Gutenberg

My first years were spent ... Can I ride straight past them, too? Since I have kept few impressions of infancy, better that page of life stay blank. Only a single early memory will I own. It is dusk in the kitchen, and I am lying contented in my crib. Overhead, clothes are drying from a rack. By the hearth, my mother is telling the maid how to sew britches and nagging the cook to add more pepper to the stew.

- Talk about the works content

- Talk about the works style

Beginnings

34

There are things that shape us, that shape our writing. There are things that we think that shaped us, things we think shaped our writing. Between the two strays our memory, allow yourself to be fooled.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Write down some key points from your first memories

- Talk about how memories change

- Talk about how memories affect personality

- Reveal your memories

Early Memories

35

Psychology is never far from the writers mind, writing workshops often bordering on therapy sessions. If it floats your boat then indulge yourself at the enneagram institute.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Read from Mary R Bast talking about Enneagrams:

- What do your poems or words score for you

- Pick one out to talk about, write a few notes

- Reveal your words enneagram

2. Read Michael Hoffman’s Last Walk from his book Approximately Nowhere

The two of you, thirty-seven years married, and only to one another, I should add -- some odd stone or metal for that, or medal -- arm in arm, old, stable (your new trick, except at your age you don't learn new tricks, more as if all your lives you'd understudied age and stability), me buzzing round you like an electron, first one side then the other

3. Talk about the poem

- Would Mary think Michael’s poem is a one or a nine?

Enneagrams

36

Writers can write to be read, or write to be heard, but do writers bring more truth to their writing by hearing themselves as they create? Try it for yourself.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. Read from page 42-43 of Blake Morrison’s The Justification of Johann Gutenberg

There was one great irritant at the scriptorium: noise. Having hitherto scribed alone, I was used to just the scratching of a pen. Here I worked among grunts, belches, farts, moans, songs, whistles and gossip. Each scribe read the words aloud as he wrote them down... ...They call it the voice of the page and think it more truthful than writing. With the printing of books will it die out? I hope so.

- Talk about reading out loud

- Talk about the validity of print

2. Hand write a poem as you would like it to be seen, or how you think it might be influenced by personality

- Reveal your handwritten work

Personalities & Print

37

Chapter 8

Eyes

Visual stimuli is one of the writers greatest friends

Concentration takes our thought processes to new levels, you might surprise yourself.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. Look deep into a picture of someones eyes for 3 minutes

- After your immersion turn the picture face down and write for 3 minutes about:

- What you saw

- How you were affected

- Reveal your observations

2. What would this exercise be like with a real person’s eyes to look into

Immersion

39

As with everything there is a beginning; give it life, give it style, make it easy to enter.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Read Mathilde Blind’s poem Brown Eyes

Oh, brown Eyes with long black lashes, Young brown Eyes, Depths of night from which there flashes Lightning as of summer skies, Beautiful brown Eyes!

- Talk about how the poem begins, focus on the first line

2. Write the first line for your ‘eyes’ poem

- Reveal your first line

First Line

40

Repetition in the exercise and craft of writing is equally as powerful as the use of repetition in the writing.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Return to your photograph of eyes

- Think again about what you thought w hen asked if this had been a real person whose eyes you had to look into

- Make a few notes

2. Write more lines for your ‘eyes’ poem

Return and Move On

41

Writing about what you know is one of the truism’s for writers. What do you really know about yourself.

Section 4

LOREM IPSUM

1. Read Jacob Polley’s poem Mirror from his collection Little Gods

- Talk about the poem

2. Look in a mirror into your own eyes for 2 minutes

- Write down for 2 minutes what you saw and felt

- Reveal

3. Write a few more lines for your ‘eyes’ poem

Your Own Eyes Only

42

From fragments to completion. Gradually draw your work to a close. Be in no hurry.

Section 5

EXERCISE 5

1. Read the poem Water Blinks by Mimi Khalvati

2. Talk about the poem

- Talk about the wholeness of the poem

3. Go back to your work on ‘eyes’

- Gather what you have so far and

- Take it towards a whole poem

Make it Whole

43

Chapter 9

Impossibilities

That which we cannot easily think to achieve is often our greatest achievement

Use the writers license to imagine yourself as a new person, in a new environment with new thoughts and new feelings.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. What or who would you like to become

- Write 3 different scenarios

- Reveal

2. Talk about what makes them impossible

3. “It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy “ Mother Theresa

- Write your own uplifting quotation including the word impossible

- Reveal

Become Someone Other

45

Enjoy using silence and space to effect doubt. Leave room for the reader to wander about.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Read John Burnsides The unprovable fact : A Tayside Inventory from his book The Asylum Dance

From a distance                 they only missed    what they never saw:    the pull of borderlines                 slow     tide shifts in the angle of a wall     the slip of water                  underneath a quay shadows that came through snow                       on a journey home.

2. Talk about the poem

- Talk about how you write about that which you find impossible to reach or explain

3. Write a piece of work with space and doubt for the reader to explore

- Reveal your work

Room for Doubt

46

If you work hard to reach a faint memory you may find many useful side-streams along the way.

Section 3

LOREM IPSUM

1. Read from Rebecca Solnit’s A field guide to getting lost pages 38-39

...my childhood memories were vivid and potent, the forces that shaped me. Most of them have grown fainter with time... A person in their twenties has been a child for most of their life, but as time goes by that portion that is childhood becomes smaller and smaller, more and more distant, more and more faded There is no distance in childhood: for a baby, a mother in another room is gone forever, for a child the time until a birthday is endless. Whatever is absent is impossible, irretrievable, unreachable

- Talk about whatever is absent is impossible to reach

2. Think about your faintest memories

- Write down snippets, try to rebuild

- Reveal

Whatever is Absent

47

There is a dynamic explosive energy for writers in situations that cause the final breakage.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. Read the first 2 pages of Gazebo from Raymond Carver’s What we talk about when we talk about love

That morning she pours Teacher’s over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out of the window. I go “Holly this can’t continue. This has got to stop.”

2. Think of a situation that was or is becoming impossible, a situation that you have, or had to bring to an end

- Describe the situation

- Describe how to intend to, or did bring it to a conclusion

- Reveal

It’s Got to Stop

48

Chapter 10

Dust

Time crumbles and grinds, life in endless decay: writers also follow this path to the dust

The feeling of feeling, contrasted with the fearing of feeling, provide the writer with a light to engage in both real and imagined sensations.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. Pick up a handful of dust, feel it flowing through your fingers

- Describe the flow of dust, include what the dust could be made from

2. You have to put your hand into a pillow that you know to be full of dust mites, pick up a handful of the dust mites

- Describe your fear or otherwise as your hand enters the pillow

- Reveal your descriptions, talk about dust

Dust Flows, Dust Mites

50

Setting your words within an image or a context amplifies their meaning, reverse engineering of this procedure is equally powerful.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Read John Donne’s poem Song: Go and catch a falling star

GO and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the devil's foot, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind

- Why would the producers of the film Stardust have begun with Donne’s early lines

- Try to echo Donne’s sentiment in a poem of your own; use your previous notes about fear and flow of dust to transport you

- Reveal

Star Dust

51

The end is the end, except when the end instead is opened up into the beginning of the writers story.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Imagine you are struggling to breathe. Imagine each day over a month it gets harder to breathe. Imagine you decide to keep a diary and write down how it feels

- Write an entry for your diary

Reveal your diary entry

2. Read from Arthur Canon Doyle A diary of the dying

...as the words of one who is already dead, so closely does he stand to the shadowed borderland over which all outside this one little circle of friends have already gone. I feel how wise and true were the words of Challenger when he said that the real tragedy would be if we were left behind when all that is noble and good and beautiful had passed. But of that there can surely be no danger. Already our second tube of oxygen is drawing to an end. We can count the poor dregs of our lives almost to a minute.

Death by dust

52

Real events have the richness of unpredictability. Try to mine that richness.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. In a field a farmer harrows, he sees you at the side of the field, he stops his tractor and calls you over. You have a conversation.

- Write out your conversation with the farmer

- Reveal your conversations

2. Imagine being back in that field; try to remember all that you could see and hear and smell before and after your conversation

- Make some notes

- Reveal your notes

Fields of Dust

53

Words that have worn a groove fall easily from our lips. Do not be afraid of re-using that which is already known.

Section 5

EXERCISE 5

1. Read the lyrics to Joan Baez song Diamonds and Rust

Well I'll be damned Here comes your ghost again But that's not unusual It's just that the moon is full And you happened to call And here I sit Hand on the telephone Hearing a voice I'd known A couple of light years ago Heading straight for a fall

- Listen to Joan singing the song

- Talk about the song and how it uses poetry

- Write a poetic reply offering flowers back to Joan

- Reveal your replies

Rust, Dust and Flowers

54

Chapter 11

Generosity

Writing is the writers unique way of giving, enjoy the giving.

Gifts, even the thoughts of gifts, takes the writer to the place where he can also be generous with words.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. Think of someone you really like

- Think of three things to give them

- Reveal the person, the gifts and talk about why you chose them

2. Think of someone you really don’t like at all

- Think of three things to give them

- Reveal the person, the gifts and talk about why you chose them

- Talk about how to be compassionate towards those you don’t easily care for

Good to Give

56

The spirit in which the gift of writing is received affects the way the writer gives away his work.

Section 2

LOREM IPSUM

1. Read On Giving by Robert Graves

Those who dare give nothing Are left with less than nothing; Dear heart, you give me everything, Which leaves you more than everything- Though those who dare give nothing Might judge it left you less than nothing.

Giving you everything, I too, who once had nothing, Am left with more than everything As gifts for those with nothing Who need, if not our everything, At least a loving something.

- Talk about the poem

2. Read about the artist Michael Landy’s 2001 work Break Down where he destroyed all of his possessions

- Write a piece of work about giving, of both receiving and letting go of your possessions

- Reveal your writing

Dare to Give

57

To create the expectant receipt of a gift that one truly looks forward to is the writers gift.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Read Isola’s first letter to Juliet from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Oh my oh my. you have written a book about Anne Bronte, sister to Charlotte and Emily. Angela Maugery says she will lend it to me... You will want t o know why I admired those girls. I like stories of passionate encounters. I myself never had one, but now I can picture one... I have a stall at the market every week, where I sell my jam, vegetables and elixirs I make to restore manly ardour.

- Talk about the letter

2. Write your own short letter about when someone gave something momentous

- Reveal your letters

Giving the Right Thing

58

Interrogate other writers work for traits that you might be able to use in your own writing.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. Read Joe Kennedy’s article A challenge to poetic generosity

A word that has achieved real currency in journalistic literary criticism lately is ‘generosity’. Syntactically, conceptually complex late modernist poetry, such as Raworth’s, or J.H. Prynne’s, is perceived to be bereft of this quality, whilst the tersely  observational work of a John Burnside or Don Paterson is believed to possess it in spades. Like all abstract nouns, though, the term implies an associated rubric which marks out its ground and assures its semantic utility.

2. Read and Listen to Don Paterson’s poem Waking with Russell at The Poetry Archive

- Does Don Paterson’s work have generosity ‘In Spades’

3. Write your own poem that holds generosity within it

Generosity in Spades

59

Chapter 12

Preparation

Preparation in all things is the tool of advantage. Prepare in all aspects of your writing.

To acquire what you need for the writing is dependent on what you think you need to acquire for the reader.

Section 1

EXERCISE 1

1. List all of the things you might want to do before starting to write a poem or a short story

- Reveal your lists

2. List the audience you are aiming at with your poem, where they might read it, what you what the poem to do for the reader

- Reveal your list

Acquisition

61

To prepare to instruct someone gives a focus and concentration to your writing. Become precise. Or ambiguous, as long as you choose that on purpose.

Section 2

EXERCISE 2

1. Read from Carlos Maria Dominguez The Paper House pages 66-69

- Make a list of the experiences you want to put into your poem, think about the idea of mixed-up recollections

2. Think of instructing a local, out of work, unskilled worker. Take your 2 lists mix them up - begin to prepare your poem

- Reveal your preparations

Instruction

62

Explore your own chiaroscuro; find your own light and dark before attempting to hand it over to your reader.

Section 3

EXERCISE 3

1. Read from Mark Doty’s Still Life with Oysters and Lemon pages 5 to 7

- Think about the assertions in your poem...your matrix, your pleasures, your dialogue...

2. Refine your poem by adding something you thought missing after reading from Mark Doty’s notes

- Reveal your changes

Contemplation

63

The artist uses subtlety of tones to enhance is work. The writer can replicate or imitate the artists process using intonation. Listen to your writing, then listen again, hear your voice, the voice that nature has given you. Use your voice to bring shade to your writing.

Section 4

EXERCISE 4

1. Read from William M Cadenhead’s A Philosophy of Drawing page 48

- Talk about tone in drawing and tone in poetry

2. Take two stanzas of your poem and rewrite them in contrasting tones

- Reveal your tone work

Tone & Intonation

64

Reflection is one of the final parts of preparation. Be meticulous in working through your reflections diligently. The beauty is most often to be found in the detail.

Section 5

LOREM IPSUM

1. Read The insistence of beauty by Stephen Dunn

- Write down about what works for you, what doesn’t work, what you do understand, what you don’t understand, how the poem moves you, where the poem takes you, what you would keep, what you would change

- Reveal your notes

2. Repeat the process with your own poem

- Reveal your revised poem

Gather Your Preparations

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