January 10th Session & January Writing Task - with the fabulous Roz Goddard and Poetry on Loan!

Well we truly started 2015 with a bang! We had the pleasure of welcoming former Birmingham Laureate Roz Goddard to our group to lead us in exercises on writing poetry from prompts.

We were lucky enough to welcome some new faces, as well as familiar faces from other writing groups, and our group friend Jane Seabourne - who had masterminded the session in conjunction with Poetry on Loan -  joined us too.

Roz started with a little game to introduce everyone in the room. She had laid out a variety of objects on the table, including playing cards, a mobile phone, a necklace, a shaving brush and various other items. We each had to choose an object which we connected with in some way and describe our connection with it, so we learned a little something about everyone around the table.

We first of all loosened up our writing minds with a bit of freewriting – or, ‘hotpenning’ – where the writer does a stream of consciousness exercise without considering grammar or other editing. Roz gave us the starting phrase: ‘It always happens. I can feel my heart racing…’ and we continued writing non-stop for 5 minutes.

Once we were nice and limber, Roz asked us to do a visualisation exercise. We chose an object - either from the table or another one we had thought of that we wanted to write about – and we all closed our eyes as Roz talked us through a surreal scenario where we buried the object in the ground! She promised we would pick this up again later in the session but we moved on to another exercise.

Roz had brought with her a selection of postcards which she distributed around the table for us to look at. We picked ones we were drawn to, and then answered a series of questions about the pictures, such as ‘What time of day is it in the picture?’ and ‘What is happening out of shot?’. As we brought all of these answers together, a poem started to form! We had a bit of time to work on them and read them aloud to the group. There were lots of great interpretations of the prompts, and lots of potential for some strong poems.

Then we returned to our buried items from earlier in the day. We did another visualisation where Roz talked us through returning to the place where we had buried our items a year on, to find that a tree had grown from our items! We had to imagine what a tree which had sprouted from an inanimate object would look like, and write about it. This exercise we took away with us to finish over the month and share it at February’s meeting.

These exercises really helped us to understand how we, as writers, can be inspired from everyday objects, and gave us a great kick-start to the year’s activities. It was lovely to meet Roz, who was an excellent teacher, and to reinvigorate our creative juices with some new writing exercises. Many thanks to Roz, Jane Seabourne and Poetry on Loan for enabling Blakenhall Writers to host such a useful session.

January Writing Task

If you want to join in the task this month, imagine a tree which has grown from an inanimate object, and share your thoughts with us in February! You can pick any object you like.

Nice November

For this month's session, three of our members brought some items which kick-started the group's imagination and inspired them to write poems and stories. These items were collected from India, the Philippines and the UK. They include:

~ a figurine of the Taj Mahal
~ a real peacock feather
~ a figurine of an Indian goddess
~ a booklet of Tagalog instructions of how to pray with a Rosary
~ a bottle of eucalyptus-scented oil
~ an oyster shell
~ a charm bracelet from the 1940s
~ a piece of broken pottery found in a beach
~ and some horse brasses

Our members came up with different and interesting drafts. We had a poem about a potter, a poem about letting go and moving on, an interesting piece about a man who goes to church to 'cleanse' himself, a piece about the beauty of a peacock, and many more.

We definitely had a great time writing and we hope to post some of our finished works here soon. Watch out for that! :-)

March 8th Session & March Writing Task

In our session on Saturday 8^th March, Cherry held a session about how to look for inspiration for writing, and how to develop ideas into the starting point for a piece of writing or poetry.

We explored how to use all 5 senses to observe what’s around us, including reading the news, eavesdropping (discreetly!) and keeping a diary to refer back to.

Everyone tried their hand at ‘freewriting’, which can be a bit daunting if you haven’t tried it! We then expanded ideas using the ‘clustering’ technique which uses word association to bring out images to put into your writing.

Another method we used to set up an idea was based on the old party game Mad Libs. We started with a sentence:

(Who) clutched the (What) and ran (How) through the (When) (Where).

Then we each picked out words randomly for each ‘missing’ section: Who, What, How, When and Where. The idea was to end up with a surreal sentence and use a short story to explain the ‘Why.’

You end up with some hilarious sentences this way!

 Santa Claus clutched the cat and ran angrily through the prehistoric pig farm.

Lionel Richie clutched the Bible and ran lazily through the Tudor steam room.

A small child clutched the stereo and ran in terror through the post-war holiday camp.

Hints & Tips

There are some key things we covered to help us in time when we feel uninspired. Try the following to get the creative juices flowing:

Ø      Write as often as possible – it will get you into the habit of producing drafts to look back over. Just remember not everything you write has to be ‘finished’ – even a freewrite can open up inspiration.

Ø      Go through the motions – doing exercises like the ones listed here can bring up surprising results. Even if you don’t feel it’s worth it at the time, you might get a spark of inspiration, either now or in the future if you read back through them.

Ø      Surf the net – there are lots of websites such as http://writingexercises.co.uk/index.php which provide prompts to give you inspiration.

Ø      Join a writing website – a great way to get feedback on your work, and some of them run contests to get you inspired.

Ø      Find competitions – even if you don’t want to enter, the themes might give you some ideas. Check out http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/competitions

Ø      Keep a writer’s notebook - having a notepad to hand means that you can scribble down things you see while out and about, write and re-write drafts, and experiment with your writing. 

Writing task

Our writing task this month is to practice using these techniques to create a poem or short story. There are two options:

Option 1: Use a word from your observations of what’s around you, or one of the following prompts to create a freewrite or a spider diagram (clustering), which you can expand into a poem of up to 20 lines,  or short story of up to 500 words.

Ø      Autumn

Ø      Tokyo

Ø      The weather

Ø      Chocolate

Ø      Coral reef

Option 2: Compile your own list of ‘Who-What-When-Where-How’ words, or use these. Pick some at random to populate this sentence, and use it as the opening for a short story of up to 500 words.

Speaking (How) in the (Where), (Who) gestured at the (When) (What).

Complete this for next month’s meeting on April 12^th, where we’ll meet at 10:45 to go through these before our guest speaker, Jack Edwards, arrives. Have fun guys!