Answering Back

What a wonderful bird the Zoom are
When we there we here almost;
When we mute we speak almost.
We ain’t got no sense hardly;
We ain’t got no near hardly either.
When we write, we write what we ain’t got almost.

The last weekend in January 2021 has seen the most wonderful flurry of writing events. It is so cheering to hear news of so many of you out there meeting remotely, writing together, sharing closely. Thank you so much, to all of you who take time to organise such meetings.

They mean a great deal.

This weekend I joined the London group led by David Marshall. There were seventeen of us on screen, sharing as a whole group and moving in and out of smaller groups to write and talk together. As always, the session was beautifully prepared and generously shared. David brought such a variety of ideas and resources, so there was great pleasure in writing for ourselves, and much to be taken on into our various classrooms, both face to face and remotely.

Many of us were very taken with an idea from a Poetry Society worksheet developed with the Orwell Society. All the ideas, centred round poetry and political language, are of interest. David introduced us to Malika Booker’s poem, That Force-ripe Morning and to a form new to me, invented by Karen McCarthy Woolf, in which the poet takes another text – in the case of Malika Booker, a political speech - and answers back to it.

That Force-ripe Morning takes the words of a speech by Nigel Farage after the referendum vote. She creates couplets/ couplings using words from the speech in the first line, and her own words answering back in the second:

Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking,
like cracked eggs in we sky, this force-ripe morning

on an independent United Kingdom
where crapo croak he song each morning

this, if the predictons are right, this will be a victory
grabbed like flies snatched with fork tongue flickering.

We found the whole business of answering back to poetry and prose, to poems we want to take issue with, to advice we want to question, full of energy and promise.

Here, also, is the opportunity to use our own voices, our own language, in response to those who speak differently, think differently. Here is Karen McCarthy Woolf, quoted by The Poetry Society.

I wanted to integrate the two voices, but also to subvert or extend what the original writer was
saying. The cadences of the original determined to some degree the tone of the new text. [...] The
response line is intended to act as an asymmetric mirror of the original. You might have rhyme, assonance, repetition, or a variation. [...] The ‘coupling’ is a response to both prose poems and found poems – and to my own experience as a Jamaican-English hybrid Londoner. I think the impulse to unify seemingly disparate parts is part of a larger poetic.

The Poetry Society worksheet can be found here.

David also introduced the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition of community based photographs of the Lockdown 2020. I urge you to have a look at it if you have not already seen it.

The last time that this group met face to face, this time last year, was at the National Portrait Gallery. We long for the time when we will be face to face again, manoeuvring our pots of Earl Grey tea and deliberating between chocolate brownie and lemon drizzle. In the meantime, these groups on Zoom have been lifelines. And we have been inventive and compassionate. Jan told me how she has been writing weekly with a friend, the space both a motivation to write and a time for friendship through writing. It has kept her going, she told me. “It’s a comfortable place, It’s a world of words. It’s your own place where you can go to.”

We need those places. Theresa Gooda and her Sussex writers explored a sense of place. She writes “It turns out of course that place resonates more strongly than ever when we are ‘locked down’.”

Alison Jermak has circulated around her group, a wonderful on-line booklet of ideas for diary writing, remembering Anne Frank at this time.

Marjory Caine and her group wrote about winter weather on Saturday. As always, Marjory brought a treasure trove of resources to the group. I was only sorry not to be able to join them for sharing.

Marjory did, however, mention Gigantic Cinema A Weather Anthology edited by Alice Oswald and Paul Keegan. Since it was the second time I had heard the title recommended in as many days, I pass the recommendation on to you. Here’s a link to the Scottish Poetry Library’s review.

And I could not resist including Marjory’s prompt for a short-write:

‘A thunder-storm came on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge was running bare-headed to enjoy the commotion of the elements’

Write for 10 minutes on an experience, real or imagined or both, of winter weather. Place a character or two in the landscape/cityscape, ‘bare-headed’ and let them loose!

Thank you, Marjory! And thank you and good wishes to all of you who are still meeting and writing together. We are so lucky!

What You Need To Keep Warm

I have been thinking about the place that writing can have in people’s lives.

I have said before that writing is a human activity. In fact, people are at the core of any writing, whether as writer or reader or subject. That seems to be overlooked by most recent directives about teaching writing. The emphasis on technical accuracy and grammatical knowledge, on textual features and such, has overshadowed what it means to write.

In our writing groups we experience directly the ways that writing transforms us, both individually and as a community.

We reflect on our own lives and those of others. We shape and re-shape thoughts and feelings. We travel into our hearts. We travel across the globe.

During our last Norwich Writing Teachers meeting we wrote in response to a poem written by Neil Gaiman for the UN Refugee Agency UK: What you need to keep warm. The Agency invited people across the world to send in drawings and paintings in response to the words and then created this video.

When we wrote, we thought of both physical and abstract things that warm us. Emily Rowe shared the video with her Year 5/ 6 class who are isolated at the moment and learning at a distance. One wrote about how hearing ‘Well done, that’s great,’ makes you feel warm. And here are more:

The warmth of a smile
Hugs and fire
A snuggle with grandad
Hot chocolate
Cups of tea
My hot water bottle
Friendship and family

Sometimes, even the warmth of a smile is hidden behind a face mask. That is why I would add the unexpected gift of words to my list of things that warm us.

There is a saying that firewood warms twice -once when you saw the logs, and again as it burns in the hearth. Perhaps words can warm three times, once as you write, twice as you give them, a third time as they are read.

A Gift of Words

At our Norwich Teachers’ Writing group this week we wrote about gifts. And we wrote gifts of words. For me, meeting with this group - and with other writing groups – is a gift.

Each time I sit down with teachers to write, I am overwhelmed with the pleasure of it. How good it has been, over the last year of isolations and zooming and lockdowns and remote learning, to sit by a screen and write alongside others on the screen, writing, by their screens.

Of course it is not the same as being side by side - and this year we’ve missed handing round the stollen - but there has been a calm; and an affirmation of our lives, alone and together.

It so happened that our group met this week on the first day of Hanukkah. The Chief Rabbi spoke on Thought for the Day that morning. (You can find it on the Today programme, BBC Radio 4, December 10th 2020, at 7.50am) He spoke about the seven words for ‘gift’ that exist in Hebrew. Each provides us with a different way of thinking about the nature of gifts and giving. A gift can be a blessing, a good wish; it can be an act of appreciative joy, given in the moment, in the present; another word denotes the gift for special occasions, a thoughtful gift; and the fourth word denotes a gift given to a good cause; the fifth is a similar gift, but unsolicited, another example of giving in the moment. Finally, Rabbi Mirvis spoke of a gift that takes time, effort and talent in the making. It draws people together. It is for a greater good. One such gift, this year, he said, has been the development of vaccines designed to prevent the spread of Covid 19.

We thought about John May’s ‘Six Things for Christmas’:

I wish to be given beautiful things this Christmas,
Beautiful but impossible.

It’s a poem that Jill Pirrie mentions in On Common Ground (1987) London: Hodder & Stoughton. She asks us to think of memories so dear to us that they occupy a special place. These can be given, as gifts to those who might share those memories. This year, when we will be sharing festivities with far fewer people, and when some people we know may well be alone, it may be that the words you send them could be the loveliest gift.

Writing Inside Out

I am sorry that I have not published anything here for so long. I have known I should. In April I experienced a life-changing event and have just not been able to find public words. I have written. Writing has remained my lifeline, but, until the last few days, I have not found the energy to write beyond myself. I think that kind of ebb and flow of writing and what we choose to write -or not - may be familiar to most of us. I hope that you have been able to find time to write for yourself. Perhaps you have used and enjoyed the regular writing prompts posted on the site . Have you had time to read Katie Kibbler’s wonderful account of her encounters and commitment to NWP teacher writing groups? If you haven’t already, read what she has to say.  Feel inspired by her!

More than ever, our groups of teacher writers, and those who are not yet part of a group, need the time and space to write, and we need each other. Writing together brings a kind of affirmation, inspiration and comfort that infuses our lives and our teaching. It would be good to hear news of what you have been writing, how you have been meeting. Most of our established groups are writing together by Zoom. Unexpectedly, the Zoom meeting for writers is remarkably different from the many other on-line meetings that you may have to deal with. Essentially, the on-line meeting for writing teachers has become, what one teacher described as ‘a sacred space’. It works so powerfully for our well-being and is, at the same time, ‘the best kind of CPD’. 

During the spring and summer, when teachers were teaching remotely to blank screens, dipping in and out of school, caring for the children of key workers, trying to home school our own children, we, in Norwich, found that our meetings were a space that was ours. I was able, home alone, to run a meeting every week, rather than monthly. And that has proved to be wonderful. People come and go according to commitments and timetables, but we are always there on a Thursday. Sometimes children join us -and that is a pleasure and a privilege. And I have found that we are learning even more about ourselves as writers and teachers of writing.

My usual approach to running a writing group is to combine adult focused activities alongside approaches and ideas that can be transferred to the classroom. I have always included in our meetings some focus on pedagogy or process. But during lockdown, I began choosing ideas and prompts that were designed with the group and our situation in mind. I felt that we just needed the space to write -and to hear other people’s writing, about our days, about what we have lost, and what we have found, pleasures and sadnesses. And there is always laughter. At some point I worried about the teaching part of this venture. Had we lost that element of our meetings? And that is when someone said that this was the best kind of CPD. The weekly commitment has allowed people to stay in the writing moment, and not feel they have to pick it up again after a month or more. A weekly commitment is not necessary, though people reported how they had more frequently gone back to their writing, revised it, developed it. Most importantly, they said that what they were learning for themselves, through writing themselves, was richer and more deeply embedded in their teaching than in other forms of professional development. It is what I have always known at some level. It is hard to capture. It encourages me to encourage you to write with others!

We learn to write from the inside out…

Writing Groups...Remotely

“Thanks for joining this morning. [It] was really nice to see everyone who made it, and so lovely to do some writing and laugh and share ideas.”

“Thank you so much for joining in with today’s writing session in your various ways. It was wonderful to write in your company.”

Group leaders, David Marshal and Alison Jermak, sign off at the end of their respective writing group meetings. At a distance. It is lovely to write and laugh and share ideas. It is wonderful to write in the company of others.

I feel sure that many of you will have sought out a time during the day when you are able to write. We are discovering, in new ways, the power that writing can have in our lives; the way that writing works within us and takes us beyond ourselves. We are also discovering the great need we have to be in touch. In touch. We may not be near, or even touch, especially if we live alone. But we may be in touch. And the great pleasure of written and voiced communication is brought into sharp focus when closeness is denied. Alison and David are among a growing number of NWP group leaders who are finding ways to create writing workshops, writing meetings that allow us to hear our words, and the words of others, on the air.

These two leaders have been able to use Zoom to create their groups. Simon Wrigley, I know, ran his group last Saturday through e-mail. Alison accommodated both.  I envy those who are able to hear poems and prose read aloud and to share the thoughtfulness and the laughter. I have loved the group contact that is generated and the conversations that have arisen. Several weeks ago, a long-standing writing group to which I belong was cancelled for non-pandemic reasons. On the verge of lockdown, I think we felt the loss keenly. Rather tentatively, I began a virtual writing weekend, imagining the arrivals, the crunch of wheels on gravel, Radio 3 in the lit kitchen, our host asking whether we would like tea, or are we ready for a beer? I set writing prompts at appropriate times. During the weekend we quietly exchanged e-mailed conversations. We exchanged writing. Friends who would not have been able to be there in person were able to join us. Those of you who belong to writing groups know just how nourishing and inspiring they are. They are deeply human.

What next?

You could initiate a group, a trio, a pair of you, who would write together. Start with some shared prompts and see where this takes you. Alison and David kept to the pattern of regular groups: words, a short writing activity, a longer more considered piece of writing. If you are starting a new group, you may like to begin with just one short starter and then time for a longer piece of writing. You can decide. There are daily short prompts on this website. There are many more ideas in the Exercises section and in the archived, original website which you can access on the home page. Alison and David drew upon some of the brilliant resources that are available to us on line. David used a session from the Arvon 5 day short story challenge.

Alison chose a poem from Anthony Wilson’s wonderful website. If you are not already signed up for that, I recommend it.