Issue Number 56, Spring 2012, ISSN 1361-8539 Whither the Workshop
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WW RR II TT II NN GG in E E Issue Number 56, Spring 2012, ISSN 1361-8539 D D U U C C A A T T I I O O N N Whither the Workshop? Andrew Cowan, Sam Kelly, Richard Beard NAWE Northampton Conference Collection: Julie MacLusky; Vanessa Gebbie & Sieneke de Rooij; Danielle Jawando & Bernie Howley; Heather Richardson; Caroline Murphy; Susan Greenberg, Hilary Jenkins & Julie Wheelwright; Nigel Smith; Wes Brown with David Tait & Daniel Sluman plus: Linda Anderson; Dave Attrill; Ardella Jones; Derek Neale; Ian Pople; Siobhan Wall; The Writerʼs Compass; news; reviews CONTENTS EDITORIAL The Writer’s Compass: Professional Development news and opportunities. centre pages i-viii Liz Cashdan introduces this edition, reporting on the NAWE Conference in Northampton, 2011. The Future Is Words: Wes Brown, Daniel Sluman and page 1 David Tait provide a flavour of the Young Writers’ session in Northampton . NEWS page 45 Facts and Feelings: Concluding our round-up of the Chair and Director’s Reports NAWE Conference 2011, Susan Greenberg, Hilary NAWE Conference & other networks Jenkins and Julie Wheelwright present the conclusions The Young Writers’ Hub of their panel. HE International News page 47 Professional & Higher Partnership Higher Education Academy Being in Uncertainties, Mysteries and Doubts: Derek Other HE News : Neale completes our three-part exploration of the role Lapidus of the imagination in the academy today. PBS & Poetry Society News page 49 Other Announcements & Members’ News New Members Whither the Workshop? Andrew Cowan, Sam Kelly Guide to Submissions and Richard Beard discuss the strengths and shortcomings of the Creative Writing workshop. ARTICLES page 54 Fluency, observation and voice : Ian Pople considers A NAWE Conference: Julie MacLusky reflects on the issues in the teaching of creative writing to non-native rich variety of offerings at Northampton . speakers . page 21 page 61 A Poem in the Space between Languages : Vanessa Taking risks in fiction : Linda Anderson discusses Gebbie and Sieneke de Rooij describe a writing how we enable our students to write boldly. experiment at the NAWE Conference 2011 . page 64 page 26 Playground: Dave Attrill describes the emergence of Making it: Craig Batty introduces Danielle Jawando his novel from a WEA class. and Bernie Howley talking about their progress as page 69 writing students . page 29 On a Learning Curve: Ardella Jones charts the founding of her own creative writing business. ‘Texts of Poetics’ and Historical Fiction : Heather page 71 Richardson considers how authors make critical reflections on their own work . The importance of quiet places for writers : Siobhan page 34 Wall urges us towards creative silence. page 74 Mute Disabled Characters in YA Novels : Nigel Smith investigate s with reference to his own work. page 38 Reviews page 77 Poetry, Practice and Pedagogy : Caroline Murphy Advertisement page 84 shares the findings of the Well Versed pilot. page 41 Cover Image: from Quiet Amsterdam by Siobhan Wall (see p74) Writing in Education EDITORIAL Welcome to what is the last NATE projects some forty years ago. But perhaps every edition of Writing in Education generation has to discover America for themselves. as the NAWE journal under Ardella Jones has set up her own teaching company the aegis of the Arts Council. though her account of administrative red tape in the From now on we stand on our small business world sounds no better to me than the own or rather on our own but red tape that tied her up in FE. David Attrill, a writer obviously with the support of without any Higher Education qualifications, writes all of the writers and teachers about his experience of completing a novel in a WEA who are evidence of the group and then publishing it himself through Lulu.com. things that NAWE stands for. He has been able to capitalize on the Internet just like This edition is a good the writers and editors who contribute to Wes Brown’s example of the stretch and article, ‘The Future is Words’. breadth of NAWE’s interests and activities and contains articles which arose out of By contrast, Danielle Jawando and Bernie Howley sessions at the NAWE conference in Northampton in describe how achieving a BA and MA in writing has November 2011, together with a range of articles which turned them into professional writers and teachers. And highlight how writing is alive and well in communities, Julie MacLusky, lecturer in HE, who has spent several schools and universities in spite of restrictions, financial, years like a good many school teachers do, facilitating administrative, pedagogic and environmental. students’ writing without doing her own, praises the NAWE conference for allowing her space to think about As Siobhan Wall says, writers need quiet places, so how her own writing. pleasing that Vanessa Gebbie and Sieneke de Rooij managed to find enough of these to produce the I’d like to end with an endorsement of Ian Pople’s amazing guessed translation by Vanessa of Sieneke’s attempts to value the accidental voice of non-native poem written in Dutch. And how good to hear from speakers. Here is a poem I wrote as a result of an email Nigel Smith that he has found a silent tongue to give from a Japanese friend whose English is far from perfect, voice to mute characters in his own writing for young but whose language afforded me that imaginative space adults. It’s the discovery of those unexpected places, to write the poem. literal and imaginary, that make writing so worthwhile for writer, teacher and reader. Wes Brown has found a place for new voices through the Young Writers’ Hub, Email from the East Ian Pople has recognized the vitality in the non-native speaker’s accidental and unconventional choice of And today a Japanese voice floats into my inbox: vocabulary and syntax. Derek Neale champions the Dear Liz, how are you? Japan became cold. writer’s need for uncertainty, mystery and doubt, and Japan is autumn, the time when coloured leaves Linda Anderson asks us to take the risks that will lead are beautiful. It is my wish that there is always you us to unusual places in our writing and teaching. for happiness well. The check of a sentence Heather Richardson suggests we need not be afraid of and the word is not possible precisely. explanations and exegeses and gives us the example of If there is a mistake, please permit it. Umberto Eco and Kate Grenville. So I write back: Dear Fukoko, Sam Kelly asks in her discussion with Andrew Cowan Thank you for your email. It is not cold here yet and Richard Beard on the usefulness of workshops in but it is autumn and the leaves are starting to colour. Higher Education teaching:“What about the rest of us?” In fact, I have a flaming Japanese acer in my garden. Her question refers to how academic teaching differs I am not sure if flaming is precisely possible. from market-led teaching undertaken by the National I hope you too will permit my mistakes. Academy of Writing. But we need as well to ask about the “rest of us” who are outside both the academic and Liz Cashdan the NAW top-end of the market. Caroline Murphy has some answers in her report about how the North-East is getting teachers to become writers though this is nothing new: I have to admit that I was involved in similar Writing in Education 1 NAWE NEWS CHAIR’S REPORT So when NAWE supports its members, it is supporting two groups of writers: it directly supports the Research from Iowa established writers who are also teachers, and indirectly University in 2002 suggested supports the fledgling or emerging writers who we being a writer is an essential teach in schools, universities and community settings. part of our identity. Both of these groups produce ‘works’ – poems, short “Creative writing,” concludes stories, novels, plays, screenplays – which wouldn’t Susan X Day, “is fully have been written without the support of NAWE. imbued in a writer’s sense of self, as perhaps gender is in I explained to the Arts Council some of the ways in most of us, and not to be a which we provide that dual support: through the creative writer would feel workshops at our conferences which support, develop alien and inauthentic in a and share our own writing as well as the workshops most disturbing way.” We and talks which enable us to better inspire our students; are simply not ourselves if we through the articles in our magazine; through all the are not writing; whether or not we are published, events organized by the Writer’s Compass, and last but whether or not we are acknowledged, we see ourselves not least, by our Writers’ Retreat, which allows the as writers. writer-self an oasis of creative peace. A few years later, I was interviewed by a Romanian Our plan is to continue supporting both our writer and student for her MA Dissertation. I found myself writer-teacher selves, to enable us and our students to explaining the relationship between myself as teacher/ write, and write and write. academic and myself as writer. I said, ”When I retire I Maggie Butt will no longer be an academic, but I will always be a writer, till the day I die.” DIRECTOR’S REPORT Both of these came into my mind recently at our Annual meeting with the Arts Council, where a question arose Curriculum Review which seemed central to what NAWE actually is and what it does for its members. There was a suggestion that NAWE members were teachers foremost, rather When we read Michael than writers, and that NAWE was using therefore its Gove’s comments about funds to support education.