Interested in contributing?
We invite NAWE members to write on the subject of creative writing in education - in schools, adult education and community settings. We encourage you to think broadly on this topic and address any issue relating to the development of a space for creative writing in the education system. Please note, it is developmental work that we wish to highlight, not self-promotion. It may be useful to think about the kinds of articles most useful to your teaching and practice. Submission deadlines: Winter 2021: 22 November (published mid January) Spring 2022 (Conference Edition): 4 April (published mid May) Summer 2022: 1 August (published September) For submission guidelines please refer to: www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/nawe-magazine/submissions.html Writing in Education Team: Editor: Lisa Koning, publications@nawe.co.uk Reviews: Matthew Tett, reviews@nawe.co.uk Advertisement Enquiries: publications@nawe.co.uk
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Writing in Education is the members magazine for the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) All work is copyrighted to the author or artist. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without permission from the publisher. 2 Writing in Education
A word from the Editor
Welcome
I came across the Yinka Shonibare CBE display entitled The British Library at the Tate Modern on a recent visit to London - my first for over a year due to lockdown. This is the description that goes with the display: Printed in gold on the spines of 2,700 of the books are the names of first or second-generation immigrants to Britain. Whether celebrated or lesser known, they have all made significant contributions to British culture and history. There are also books with the names of those who have opposed immigration. Other books are unmarked, suggesting that the story of immigration in Britain is still being written. The Tate Modern is one of my favourite locations to wander around but the fact we are still dealing with a pandemic was not lost. No longer could you just saunter in. Now I needed to go online and book a ticket. And I missed the usual buzz of the crowds. It was significantly less busy as I followed the designated path around. Entering this room was quite a shock to the senses. The colours and rows upon rows of books is mesmerising. I spent ages reading the names of the spines, some I recognised, others I didn’t. I was struck by the Britain it represented - the many names on the shelves have all shaped the nation in different ways, and demonstrates the amazing contribution migrants often make to their new home. Such a reminder that it is diversity, equality and acceptance that makes a community thrive. As I prepare this Summer edition of Writing in Education, we are also thinking ahead to our conference for next year. While March 2022 might seem some time away, we start preparing now to ensure we’re on track. On pages 14 and 15, you’ll see the poster for the conference and our call for papers. In this issue I am delighted we have two articles that are further instalments to previous articles we have published. Daniel Anthony’s article on Negotiating Creativity continues his discussion on creative writing and it’s relationship with the market. Following on from Trevor Day and Ursula Canton’s article on Reconciling Identities in our previous edition, Trevor has contributed a paper on Going Online. And as we look forward to heading back into classrooms and the possibility of face-to-face teaching once again, Elen Caldecott’s article on the impact of being physically present is very relevant. While Gráinne Daly, Francis Gilbert and Peggy Riley consider the benefits of venting for creative writing teachers and students. Thank you to all our contributors. Once again we have a diverse range of thought providing articles. Finally, on page 11 we have outlined changes to the publications schedule for Writing in Education. We hope these changes will help our members’ magazine to best support the various events and activities of NAWE.
, Lisa
Best wishes
Writing in Education 3
Contents Editorial A word from the Editor
page 3
NAWE News Chair’s Report Director’s Report HE Committee Chair’s Column Members’ News AAWP (Australasia) Update Lapidus International EACWP Update Conference 2022 Call for Papers
page 5 page 6 page 7 page 8 page 9 page 12 page 13 page 14
Articles & Contributions Creative Contributions from Ceri Morgan and Joanne Kelleher page 16 Decision Points: Brad Gyori and James Pope discuss designing student-centred learning for digital interactive storytelling page 18 UK and US - Divided by a Common Language? Josh Schultheis reflects on why some students hate writing page 26 Rhymes and Rondeaux: Sarah Bower and Ingrid Perrin explore writing the body with words and music page 30 Going Online: Trevor Day shares a community’s experience of transforming face-to-face writing workshops, tutorials and retreats to online page 34
4 Writing in Education
Let it All Spill Out: Gráinne Daly, Francis Gilbert and Peggy Riley discuss the benefits of venting for creative writing teachers and students page 42 Negotiating Creativity: The third installment of Dan Anthony’s article on Creative Writing’s relationship with the market page 49 The Vitality of the Author: Elen Caldecott considers the impact of being physically present in a Creative Writing Classroom after a period of remote learning page 55 The Creative Interactions Project: Clare Taylor and Heather Richardson reflect on their experience of sharing teaching approaches across Art History and Creative Writing page 58 Considering Prose Poetry: Andrew Melrose discusses prose poetry and an upcoming collection of essays by Oz Hardwick and Anne Caldwell. page 63
Reviews
A selection of book reviews
page 65
Chair’s Report
NAWE NEWS
This is my penultimate piece in Writing in Education prior to my stepping down as Chair at our AGM in November 2021. I am going to say a few words about my last twenty five years of association with NAWE. I think I bumped into NAWE when it was the Northern Association of Writers in Education as I was working in Yorkshire in the early 1990s. I must have joined quite a few years later, not because I was working in education myself but because my work in the West Midlands brought me into contact with writers who were and I had an interest in developing this particular section of the writing industry. And ‘industry’ it certainly became, with a flourishing of activity both in higher education and in a range of community settings. From the early 2000s onwards, NAWE has grown alongside the sector, and I would suggest has provided a really value range of support for writers who included working as teachers of creative writing within their creative portfolio. Over this period, the meetings, conferences, training sessions, get-togethers, editorial panels, publications and schemes of practical activities that NAWE has contributed to or led is truly impressive. Our staff, past and present, working with our growing membership, have made this happen. As Chair it has been my privilege and duty simply to help facilitate our continued good work, but it is also my pleasure to look at what has been achieved and to imagine what we will do in the future and to be reminded that NAWE is an organisation of genuine and unique value. As mentioned above, I am coming to the end of my time as Chair of NAWE. I’ll offer some words of thanks next time but I am very pleased to announce that our new Chair-elect will be Andy Melrose, a long-standing member of NAWE as well as a first-rate writer. I know Andy will start to take on my role over the next few months and his appointment will be confirmed at the NAWE AGM in November. Welcome, Andy! Jonathan Davidson, Chair, NAWE
It is with much pleasure that I am about to take over as Chair of NAWE. Having been involved in NAWE over the past 20 years, it is an organisation that I have come to value immensely. But first of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Jonathan for his dedication and contribution to NAWE over many years. He leaves big shoes to fill - and I will say more about the job Jonathan has done after the handover in my first report. The role of Chair is an important one because it allows everyone who does the very good work for NAWE to have an independent ear (as it were), someone they can bounce ideas off and chat through, as well as keeping an eye on budgets etc. I am really looking forward to getting started, especially since I come in when it is in such good shape, but also at time when NAWE and its members can give a voice to the many and varied challenges we face as a global community. Andrew Melrose, incoming Chair, NAWE
Writing in Education 5
NAWE NEWS Director’s Report
Well, here we are. The future has arrived, and our lives have changed again. Amid the continuing uncertainty, I hope some of you have been able to switch off and take time out of your routine, whether that’s to write, work on your own projects, or simply re-charge and rest. By the time you read this, we will be looking ahead to what comes next – to autumn, and the return to our desks, classrooms and offices. It feels like summer only just arrived – and suddenly there are root vegetables in the oven and a pot of blackberries simmering on the stove. The baby (now a toddler) is stomping on the ground, kicking through the first drifts of leaves in her new blue shoes. We’ve been planning away at NAWE, preparing the ground for our conference in 2022 (see our ad on page 14), and our submissions portal will open in early September. Our theme this year is ‘Renewal and Resilience’. We’ve kept the conference online for another year, to ensure we remain accessible and keep costs low. We hope to see a range of proposals from many different practitioners, and we welcome submissions from members, non-members and arts professionals alike. Our conference is about you and your work, your students, your research, and your aims for the future, so we hope to see many new and familiar names in the submissions, and to see lots of you online in March. With the arrival of the future, we are now reaching the end of Jonathan Davidson’s term as Chair of NAWE. We are immensely grateful to Jonathan for leading NAWE through some of the biggest changes we’ve seen in our three decades of existence. On behalf of the NAWE team and all our members, we’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Jonathan for all the time he has given to NAWE over the past few years. We wish him all the very best in his many projects, and we’re delighted that he’ll stay on the board. In almost the same breath, we welcome Andrew Melrose as the Chair elect of the NAWE Board, an appointment to be confirmed at our AGM in November. Andy brings with him a wealth of experience in creative writing education in many different settings, and we’re looking forward to working with him more closely as develop our plans for the next five years. In other news, we’ll shortly be sending a survey to all members as we start a long-awaited update of our website with thanks to Arts Council England and the DCMS Culture Recovery Fund. Please do fill out the survey, as it will help us ensure our services continue to meet your needs. We hope to launch our new website in spring. We’re thinking keenly about wellbeing, accessibility, diversity and inclusion in all areas of our work. We’ll shortly be recruiting a Participation Associate to work on our activity programme, and we’re aiming to launch a wellbeing toolkit for writers in the next couple of months. We’ll also be supporting the board to recruit new trustees - look out for the ad - and we’re all excited about the idea of bringing in new voices and new energy to work with the organisation.. Finally, as Andy mentions in his HE update, we’re increasingly aware of the stresses and strains on many of our writers with portfolio careers who also teach in higher and further education on hourly paid contracts. We will be investigating this over the coming months to see if there are any steps we can take to work towards an improvement. Look out for more information, news and jobs in our weekly bulletin – and of course, please do get in touch if there’s anything you’d like NAWE to be doing more of, or to feedback on our plans. Seraphima Kennedy Director NAWE 6 Writing in Education
NAWE NEWS HE Committee Chair’s Column Summer... It has been a busy six months for the HE Committee, and I would like to outline below some of the initiatives and discussions we have been a part of. The HE Committee continue to monitor the impact the pandemic is having on the HE sector as a whole. We are paying special attention to ideas around blended learning and how this will (or will not) continue after all the restrictions are lifting. What is becoming clear is that while some universities continue to support writers working with them, others aren’t quite so understanding and we have to take a balanced view there. We acknowledge and understand the issues around ‘blended learning’ which are not going to disappear overnight. And, indeed they may never go back to how things were. We continue to monitor this but as an organisation we need to be able to present ideas on what we have learned and how to make things better for the future. This process has begun and we will come back with some ideas. However, we would love to hear about any successes out there. Please do write to us with them. We have also been engaged with the Society of Authors on various issues such as ‘Open Access’ (a problem for writers and PhD candidates who wish to pursue commercial publishing). Also issues such as ‘zero contracts’ for associate lecturers. The Open University have a gone a long way to helping ‘Associate Lecturers’ secure fixed contracts but other institutions have much further to go. In a climate where universities are engaging more casual staff and having less permanent heads, this is clearly very concerning. Along with the Society of Authors, we will support this across the board, if we can. We recently conducted a survey on the different way institutions interpret their regulations on creative PhDs. It is clear these regulations are written differently across the country, including the split between the creative work and the critical reflection. It might be that we can produce a firmer steer on expectations because a consensus does seem to be coming to the fore. It was just as I expected. Apart from a couple of tweaks, the proportion/balance issue has been addressed simply but not on a percentage split. The creative piece is as long as it has to be, for example a 90,000 word novel, 40 poems etc., but the critical reflection is 20-30,000 words. That way the critical piece is fairly standard but the artefact is judged on its own merits. One thing we considered was the ‘question’ the PhD addresses (with the creative piece being the answer). If, say, a performance piece, or a poetry collection addresses the BLM issue, what would be the question which frames the performance/collection? So the critical rationale is pushed towards critical reflection in the creating, and not just the theory of performance - or in a poet’s case, creative writing. However, it’s clear from this kind of input from colleagues on the committee that we can begin to bring a paper of suggestions together which we can put on the website. One of the new things we have put in place – and this is an alert out there to undergraduate tutors –we will be adding a student contribution feature in upcoming editions of Writing in Education. This will be designed to give students experience in the submissions process. More details are to follow on this but we feel it allows us to encourage new, young writers. On the good news front, Writing in Practice has two new Principal Editors. Kate North (Cardiff Met) and Francis Gilbert (Goldsmiths) have agreed to share the post. And sharing the post will be welcome because the Journal has grown hugely in the past few years. Indeed we are getting record submissions, way beyond our early expectations. Much of this success is down to Derek Neale (OU) who is the outgoing Principal Editor. Derek, we thank you for your strong hand on the tiller, your canny steering as each issue came to publication and never ending energy in taking it forward. You will be greatly missed, although I expect the handover will have your Writing in Education 7
NAWE NEWS attention to detail and care for the transition. All of the committee expressed their thanks and gratitude and I pass that on here, and on behalf of the whole membership who value the Journal. I hope the summer has allowed you to re-charge and look forward to your own projects. Finally, it has been the usual summer; tennis thrilled us for a bit, football nearly came home, the Olympics are on as I write and optimism lingers; I hope this means many of you are getting some good writing done, I know I am. Stay safe and stay well, let’s hope the Covid brambles clear from our path so we can saunter down autumnal paths and through the trees with a smile - it’s a great time to be a part of NAWE as we continue to shape and adapt our organisation to the challenges in the world today, for the future. Andrew Melrose HE Committee Chair, NAWE
HE Committee: References and Links Advice on lodging doctorates and embargos https://www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/writing-at-university/research/lodging-theses.html Directory of Creative Writing External Examiners (requiring your NAWE membership password) https://www.nawe.co.uk/membership/members-area/external-examiners.html NAWE Creative Writing Research Benchmark 2018 https://www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/writing-at-university/research.html NAWE incoming HE Committee members list https://www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/writing-at-university/he-network/he-committee.html NAWE guidance on short-term academic contracts https://www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/writing-at-university/contracts.html OU/NAWE events (audio recorded) on Creative Writing and the REF and Creative Writing PhDs http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/contemporary-cultures-of-writing/events/contemporary-cultures-writingseminars-spring-2018 QAA Creative Writing Benchmark (teaching) 2016 https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/subject-benchmark-statements/sbs-creative-writing-16.pdf?sfvrsnd4e2f781_10 Writing in Practice - submission to Vol 7 https://www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/writing-at-university/writing-in-practice/submissions.html
Members’ News Graham Mort’s new book of short stories, ‘Like Fado and other stories’, was published by Salt Publication in February
8 Writing in Education
NAWE NEWS
AAWP Report (Australasia) By Julia Prendergast and Lee McGowan Dear NAWE readers, Thank you for the opportunity to provide an update about the activities of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), the peak academic body representing the discipline of creative writing in Australasia. Let us begin by introducing ourselves: we are Dr Julia Prendergast, AAWP Chair, and Dr Lee McGowan, convenor of the 2021 annual conference. This year, the AAWP will celebrate our 26th annual conference: https://www.usc.edu.au/ about/structure/schools/school-of-business-and-creative-industries/australasian-associationof-writing-programs-26th-annual-conference The theme of the conference is Fire Country. To support and care for Country, Tagalaka man, Victor Steffensen, author of Fire Country, argues that we must burn as if we’re ‘gardening for food’, as if we’re ‘living off the land to survive’ (2020). This wisdom is borne of and speaks directly to Indigenous practices—to conceptions of land that acknowledge more than human agency. Steffenson’s book sits like a firebreak, between discerning regenerative methods, on the one hand, and well-intended though ill-informed practices that lead increasingly to tragedy and environmental devastation, on the other. The text provides a timely focal point and, as such, the wisdom and guidance provided by Fire Country is positioned as the overarching theme for the AAWP conference: 24 – 26 November 2021. The AAWP annual conference is our most important national forum on the practices and pedagogies, as well as current and nascent debates, at the nexus of creative writing and research. Designed for creators, researchers, teachers and publishers of creative writing, who operate within and across the blurred lines of local, regional and national territories, our conference gathers some of Australasia’s most revered writers and writing researchers. We aim to build cultural capital and community capacity, facilitating meaningful community engagement and increasing our universities’ value and standing within our respective communities. You will find articles developed from many members of the AAWP community in TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, Australia’s leading journal of creative writing research: https://textjournal.scholasticahq.com/ In 2021, AAWP aims to situate traditional practices, pedagogies and conceptions at the heart of the annual conference. Our conference keynote speakers include: Victor Steffenson (Wakka Wakka Country), Professor Sandra Phillips (Gooreng Gooreng Country), Professor Phillip McLaren (Kamilaro Country), and First Nations Advisor at Queensland State Archives: Rose Barrowcliffe (Butchulla Country). The conference will be held at the Sippy Downs (Queensland) campus of the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC). The Sunshine Coast Campus is situated on the unceded lands of the traditional owners, the Kabi Kabi people, a land known for its beaches, lakes, rivers, creeks, mountains and forests. The main conference program facilitates engagement with and reflection upon the theme of ‘Fire Country’, as it relates to creative writing and research. We consider the intersection between marginalised and mainstream voices and the way these voices are represented in wild acts of making and thinking. Further, we consider the way in which this intersection reflects an iterative discourse. The program includes academic and professional development sessions for Higher Degrees by Research candidates and Early Career Researchers. We offer our membership body the opportunity to gather and to promote new creative and critical work, while building networks and engaging with industry practitioners. We have received abstract submissions that respond to the overarching theme of Fire Country through the following sub-themes: regrowth and renewal; Indigenous practices, concepts and experience; firebrands, backdrafts and ignition; minority and marginalised voices (including Writing in Education 9
themes of disability, LGBTQI+, and refugee stories); firebreaks: literal and figurative; exegetical friction; burnings – cool, mosaic, and cultural; collaborative writing; critical and ‘burning’ questions; storying regions; ecologies and crises (climate, literary and other); writing across boundaries, edges and limits; fire sticks / fire stick farming; performance and performative writing; and combustion, crises, and firestorms. We are delighted to continue our partnership with NAWE, by welcoming a number of NAWE members as virtual guests to the AAWP conference. We hope to continue this gesture of reciprocity in the years ahead. Our 2021 partners include Arts Queensland, Noosa Shire Council, Mantra Mooloolaba, Black Ant Gourmet, and Berkelouw Books. We are hosted by USC’s world-class Creative Industries facilities: the USC Art Gallery and the USC Maker Space (Queensland’s only MIT approved Fabrication Lab). We do hope you are able to join us for our annual conference. We look forward to welcoming our NAWE friends, across the seas, and to sharing published outcomes, after the conference. Reference: Steffensen, V. (2020) Fire Country. Sydney: Hardie Grant. Julia Prendergast Julia’s novel, The Earth Does Not Get Fat was published in 2018 (UWA Publishing: Australia). Her short stories feature in the current edition of Australian Short Stories. Other stories have been recognised and published: Lightship Anthology 2 (UK), Glimmer Train (US), TEXT (AU) Séan Ó Faoláin Competition (IE), Review of Australian Fiction, Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Prize, Josephine Ulrick Prize (AU). Julia’s research has appeared in various publications including: New Writing (UK), TEXT (AU), Testimony Witness Authority: The Politics and Poetics of Experience (UK). Julia is a Senior Lecturer in Writing and Literature at Swinburne University, Melbourne, and serves as Academic Director Pathways and Partnerships for the school of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education. Julia is Chair of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), the peak academic body representing the discipline of Creative Writing in Australasia. Julia’s research is practice-led, focusing meta-level processes in creative writing, including neuropsychoanalytic approaches. She is an enthusiastic supporter of interdisciplinary, open and collaborative research practices. Lee McGowan Dr Lee McGowan is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast. His primary research interests are in football studies, creative writing and digital narratives. In 2019, he published the monograph Football in Fiction: A History (Routledge) and co-authored the book, Never Say Die: the Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women’s Football (NewSouth). Alongside a number of traditional research outputs, his most recent project, a digital museum launched at Parliament House (2021), is a history of football in Queensland, funded by Football Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane City Council and Arts Queensland.
10 Writing in Education
NAWE NEWS
Writing in Education Changes to Publication Schedule We have recently conducted a review of Writing in Education’s publications schedule to ensure it best aligns with NAWEs events and activities. As a result, the following changes will be in effect from our next publication:
Summer 2022 Submissions close Monday 1st August 2022, published online Wednesday 21 Sept 2022 and hardcopy distributed from the Monday 3 Oct 2022
Winter 2021 Submissions close Monday 22 Nov 2021, published online Wednesday 19 Jan 2022 and hardcopy distributed from Monday 31 Jan 2022 Spring 2022 (Conference edition) Submissions close Monday 4 April 2022, published online Wednesday 18 May 2022 and hardcopy distributed from Monday 30 May 2022
You might notice that submission close dates now always fall on a Monday. And the editions are now more evenly distributed throughout the year. We have also adjusted the schedule so that the Spring edition can support our conference. Hopefully these changes will enable us to better support our members, but if you have any feedback or suggestions, please contact us at publications@nawe.co.uk
Writing in Practice The journal publishes scholarly articles about practice and process that contextualize, reflect on and respond to existing knowledge and understanding. Volume 6 was in published May 2020 with Principal Editor: Derek Neale, and Volume Editors: Celia Brayfield, Francis Gilbert and Andrew Melrose. ISSN 2058-5535. It contained contributions from: Amina Alyal and Oz Hardwick; Leanne Bibby; Sean Fitzgerald; Michael Fox; Megan Hayes and Sophie Nicholls; Edward Hogan; Kevan Manwaring; Rose Michael, Michelle Aung Thin and Ronnie Scott; Liz Mistry; Graham Mort; Joanne Reardon. The issue’s guest article was by Jen Webb. Volume 7 will be published in November 2021. It is a Special Issue on Multimodal Writing with guest co-editor Josie Barnard. It is open access and available here https://www.nawe. co.uk/writing-in-education/writing-at-university/writing-in-practice/current-issue.html
Volume 8 – submissions now open This volume is to be published in May 2022. We are looking for articles about the art of imaginative writing from an authorial perspective. Articles should highlight evolving and current academic thinking and practice. Creative Writing itself is welcomed when integral to an article. Submissions should be 4-10,000 words long and include an abstract of up to 200 words. All submissions will be anonymously peer reviewed. See the contributor guidelines to submit your work via the submissions link: www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/writing-at-university/writing-in-practice.html The deadline for submissions is Midnight (GMT) on Monday 11 October 2021. If you are interested in acting as peer reviewer for the journal, please send details of your expertise to the editorial board, c/o: admin@nawe.co.uk Writing in Practice is an open access, online journal that complements Writing in Education, the NAWE magazine distributed to its members. As the UK Subject Association for Creative Writing, NAWE aims to further knowledge, understanding and support research, teaching and learning in the subject at all levels. Writing in Education 11
NAWE NEWS Lapidus International The Future of Writing for Wellbeing: A virtual chocolate cake This year, Lapidus International turned 25 years old. I plucked an older issue of Writing in Education from my bookshelf and conveniently found myself staring at Issue number 70, published in August 2016. It contains a piece written by then coordinator Caleb Parkin, discussing Lapidus turning 20. Caleb writes about the ‘bright spring day’ when Lapidus members came out to celebrate the organisation’s 20th birthday, under a ‘cerulean sky’ in the ‘smart pillar-fronted Churchill building’ in Chester, just ‘a stone’s throw away from the river’.
25th Birthday Celebration – Far away, together Five years later, Lapidus members came together to celebrate once again. I attended just a stone’s throw away from my washing machine. Being online, however, did nothing to dampen the spirits of both organisers and attendees. Sheelagh Gallagher, one of the hosts of the event, even brought along a chocolate cake which was waved in front of her webcam with great enthusiasm as we all ate it up eagerly with our eyes. It was an event which celebrated just how much the writing for wellbeing community has thrived over the last 25 years and how much it has grown. We wanted it to be an opportunity for members to share their thoughts. We discussed what the community meant to us, what we want to do in the future, what we have learnt and what we want to learn. Members told us what they had been up to during the last year. They have taken photographs, painted, read and written poems, made films and many new members have joined us, coming to writing as a way to cope, escape – even thrive. Creativity and writing have continued to support and promote health and wellbeing, even during these tougher times. Many of our members have had their eyes opened to the wonders of online sessions – some expanding internationally, reaching audiences that they would never even have thought of pre-lockdown. But there are worries too. With these grand meetings online, who is being left out? Who are the silent voices being left behind? A study run last year by Professor Tony Wall and Lapidus looked at the top one percent most health deprived areas in England. Eighty-eight percent of writing activities that stopped in these areas during the lockdown period were not replaced with alternatives, despite all of these areas having new online opportunities for writing being 12 Writing in Education
created within them. A main cause of this was ‘limited access to internet technology or know how’. In an article on the Lapidus website, Barbara Bloomfield, former chair of Lapidus states that ‘people with mental health challenges - the very people most likely to benefit from writing for wellbeing - tended to become the most likely to be excluded from participation’. Online-only is clearly not the answer to make sure we can reach all the communities that need our support. So, after celebrating what Lapidus and the community had achieved over the last 25 years, thoughts turned to the future. Post-lockdown, what does a writing for wellbeing session look like?
Looking to the Future The answer is: we do not know – yet. But if our 25th anniversary conversations have taught us anything, it is that we should talk to the people out there and find out what they need. Through our numerous training opportunities and research activity, we are embracing future developments whilst continuing to challenge long held truths about how to live well and relate to one another. We want to encourage people from all walks of life to join in and raise their voices, tell their stories, offer new ways of thinking, and heal. One of these new ways, for example, has been brought to us through the enthusiasm of board member Kiz Bangerh. She is exploring how writing Hip Hop can be used for wellbeing with her organisation Hip Hop Heals. The launch of the LIRIC Journal in December 2020 is a further example of the ways in which we seek to document thinking and share good practice, as well as invite debate, showcasing and drawing on international experience of writing for wellbeing through a wide range of frameworks. We are keen to continue with the ongoing training and support activities offered for professional and aspiring professional writers, where resources allow. We now need to hear more from our unpublished or lower profile writers out there, whether they have been writing for wellbeing for many years, many months, or have just started. What are their stories? What works for them? At Lapidus, we aim to live our values and to this end we support our members who do work with all kinds of community groups across the globe, whether those communities are found in a Cornish coffee shop, or in the Australian outback.
New Leadership
NAWE NEWS
Spearheading this new direction are our two new cochairs of the organisation: Jennifer Bertrand and Val Watson.
Fox and Sveto Muhammad Ishoq – reflects our aim to be international in our focus, embracing diversity in our approach. The breadth of workshops on offer will provide exciting opportunities to learn, enjoy and be inspired.
Jennifer and Val bring their combined, varied work and personal experiences and are looking forward to working together on behalf of Lapidus, taking its agenda and values forward. This co-chairing pair who are based in the UK and Canada will be testing the interesting challenge of working across time zones online and, we hope, encouraging and modelling international collaboration to our membership and communities. Our forthcoming ‘Creative Bridges’ conference on 18th & 19th September – whose keynote speakers are Kate
By bringing people, their words and stories together, we can create a multi-layered and delicious virtual cake which will leave you wanting more.
Teachers Training Program in Pandemic Times European Association of Creative Writing Programmes (EACWP)
Colleges of Arts / Finland), Frank Tazelaar (ArtEZ / The Netherlands), Renée Combal-Weiss (Aleph-Écriture / France), Jenifer Smith (NAWE / UK) and Javier Sagarna (Escuela de Escritores / Spain), our current EACWP president.
Richard Axtell Membership, Communications and Events Coordinator Lapidus International info@lapidus.org.uk
European Association of Creative Writing Programmes (EACWP)
Due to the worldwide pandemic in July 2020, the EACWP launched the first Premium Virtual Edition of its European Course for Teachers of Creative Writing. This initiative was conceived as an on-line format committed to the need of giving continuity to a European pedagogical dialogue as in regular circumstances the EACWP was devoted to through its Teachers Training Course Program celebrated on spot in Normandy (France) in 2017 and 2018 and, the year after, in the Alden Biesen castle (Belgium) in 2019. As in the regular format of our training program, three of our most expert EACWP teachers share their different methodologies, approaches and experiences in the teaching of creative writing by offering an “auteur workshop” by performing and explaining their own ars pedagogica and didactics from both a theoretical and practical approach. All the working sessions are focused on pedagogical training and guidelines to empower the participants to develop their own teaching interests and new possibilities. Thanks to the remarkable success of the first Premium Virtual Edition, the EACWP launched a second edition (January, 2021) and a third one (July, 2021), gathering more than 25 worldwide participants, representing more than different 15 countries. In these occasions, we counted on the participation of a varied panel of our EACWP teachers such as Risto Ahti (Orivesi
Worldwide participants are invited to join our fourth Premium Virtual Edition in November (2021) as well as the fourth edition of our Teachers Training Course that will be hopefully celebrated in the Alden Biesen castle next July (2022). Criteria for participants This training is for: • Beginner teachers keen to learn about the pedagogy of teaching creative writing and the different international approaches • Intermediate teachers wanting to broaden their grasp of pedagogical concepts in an international and culturally diverse environment • More expert teachers interested in sharing their experiences and approaches and enriching their own perspectives from international discussions and comparisons • Students of creative writing willing to deepen into their knowledge and skills within the contents of the different working proposals in an international context For more information, please, visit www.eacwp.org or contact Lorena Briedis: info@eacwp.org Writing in Education 13
14 Writing in Education
2022 Conference CALL FOR PAPERS Renewal & Resilience
Creative Writing in Education and Communities in 2022 and Beyond The NAWE Conference is the annual event devoted to exploring creative writing and the teaching of creative writing in schools, communities and FE and HE settings. This year’s conference will see a mix of curated strands programmed alongside submissions from NAWE members and non-members. We invite proposals that consider the theme of renewal and resilience in creative writing and teaching practice at all levels, and in all settings. We want to hear about your projects, research and creative writing pedagogies, and how you’re teaching, researching and studying creative writing in 2021/22. We’re interested in hearing from members, non-members, writers, tutors, teachers, arts practitioners and anyone who teaches, studies, or organises creative writing in education. Key questions might include: how can we build resilience in ourselves and in the communities in which we write, study and teach? How can we build more inclusive communities of practice? How can we adapt to meet rising inequalities faced by children, young people and adults – inequalities of mental health, dis/ ability, gender, race and class? What can we do to look after our own wellbeing, and safeguard that of our students? How can writers/educators meet the threat of climate change? How can we respond to changes in the way the arts and humanities are funded? How can we find balance in our lives and continue to explore new opportunities? How can we find our way as writers and creative writing teachers, so that we are not just surviving but thriving? We welcome proposals for 30 min presentations or 50 min workshop or panel sessions. Proposals should consist of a brief (100 word) outline, exactly as you would wish the session to be described in the programme, plus biographical information on all presenters (50 words each). Workshops, panel presentations and academic papers are all welcome. Space will be limited, so early submission is encouraged. If you are chosen to present, please note that all conference speakers will need to register as delegates at a discounted rate. We will have a limited number of free/discounted available for those who would otherwise not be able to attend.
Deadlines: 6 September – call for proposals opens 1 November – call for proposals closes 6 December – successful applicants notified, programme online 13 December – registration opens 31 January – early bird closes Writing in Education 15
Lovespoon/Llwy garu My sculptor sweetheart carved me a lovespoon,
Looped fishing reel round the neck, hung it on the spare room wall. ‘Getting the handle smooth was the hardest’.
The wood curled like Treaddur Bay on a friend’s wedding morning, Even the groom longed to be in the water,
Thinking of the wetsuit in his garage as he stood to make a speech. I traced the chips and cuts of the bowl,
Sounding the lighthouse bell near Puffin Island, Wind in the grasses at Whistling Sands.
Now the spoon sits on my mantel in Birmingham, I haven’t seen my past cariad for eighteen years. I open a present sent through the post,
Slide open the box to a miniature landscape:
Pembrokeshire coast. I dip my finger in the sea.
Professor Ceri Morgan works on literary geographies, place-writing, geopoetics (site-responsive creative practices), walking studies, and geohumanities. A longstanding member of the Montreal research group, la Traversée, Ceri has worked increasingly on geopoetics as a participatory practice since 2014, leading workshops or ‘happenings’ on a variety of themes, including mining, food, persistent pain, and deindustrialisation. In April 2020, she set up an online writing group, Microclimates, in response to social and spatial restrictions prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Ceri has published some fiction, creative nonfiction, and prose-poetry. Her prose-poem, ‘Avenue Bernard’ was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 extra and RTE Radio 1 in Spring and Summer 2020.
16 Writing in Education
The Dark Courier Hid from view and blown in air; a spot of drop tumbles down to the pit of pouch, twisting around until it meets the chamber of lung; Putrid air makes the bellows slowly rise and fall; it crushes lungs to steal good life; make one happy to die for a mortal life. Dirty hands scrubbed and washed; need, masks, gloves, aprons, to support clean hands. To stop Covid-19 entering the tombs of sponge; where people clutch their chests on fluid ground abound; Broken tree branches of the lungs crushed to dust; and become carbon; part of the earth’s crust once more. The lingering smell of death to graves the new chimney sweep arrives and slowly clears the souls up best; Clinging to walls of white smooth paint; tainted with the black streaks of death; people wonder if death will Passover over or take them; soft, slowly, loud, or hard. People clapped and tapped to support the frontline army; in a bid to ward off deaths band of army; Hail!, rainbows showed the colours strong only to be left with one; Black! There was no full sight of death; as it blitz by day and night. Death swept away all of life. Flights to other countries were stopped; air pollution given the chop; Frustrated neighbours boom aloud, even the dogs not allowed; except for door callers and now it’s a crowd! Who will post your daily fight; as death took off on a cold air flight; and left us all shell shocked!
Joanne Kelleher is a small business owner of Cooling Towers Productions. She has been in business for over 11 years providing a range of persistent knowledge-on-the-go in the form of Literature reviews, Reports and Creative development. A professional member of NAWE for 8 years: Presented two workshops at NAWE conferences in 2015 & 2019 on Research methods for writers in education. Joanne is by profession a qualified chartered environmental health officer and level 5 manager status from working in Local government.
Writing in Education 17
Decision Points Brad Gyori and James Pope DESIGNING STUDENT-CENTRED LEARNING FOR DIGITAL INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING Introduction This paper reports on two community-based projects undertaken by the authors and other members of the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University in May 2018 and May 2019. Both projects were devised around the belief that creative writing using digital tools would be engaging and even inspiring for secondary school students who might not normally have access to digital tools or feel motivated to try their hand at creative writing. The practical aim was to design and produce digital interactive stories and then publish them online. These narratives would feature many types of media including written text, film, sound, photography, and drawings. Here is a video about project 1 from 2018: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=E5rbuUC_BLc The finished narratives can be experienced at http:// genarrator.org/groups/?group=2476 Here is a video about project 2 from 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time continue=2&v=_ KL25ZXGOvg The finished narratives can be experienced at http:// genarrator.org/groups/?group=32098 Refining our Digital Interactive Storytelling Project (hereafter DISP) through multiple iterations involved incorporating an Action Research methodology (Koshy 2005; McNiff 213). Each action/reflection cycle produced new observations as well as written and oral feedback that we were able to draw upon when modifying our plan of action.
18 Writing in Education
At every stage, our work was informed by student centered theories of pedagogy. We considered how the learning design influenced students at the level of the individual (Gee 2003; Yelland and Masters 2005), and the team (Bandura 1971; Schüler 2007). We were also aware of other comparable projects in the field, which reveal similar advantages of using digital tools to work creatively with young people (see Botfield et al 2018; Heron and Steckley 2018; Sadik, A., 2008). We believe our project is unique in that it uses a custom-built software platform. The two projects involved Year 10 students at the Bishop of Winchester Academy in Bournemouth, UK. It has been identified by Bournemouth University as a low-HEparticipation institution. Therefore, we were especially keen to work with the students there. UK Year 10 participants, ages 14-17, were tasked with creating interactive multi-media stories with the software program Genarrator (Pope, 2009a; 2013a, b). These two iterations of our digital storytelling initiative each took place over a two week period: writing, story mapping, and preproduction in week one; production, postproduction and a final presentation for peers in week two. They both featured 20 student-participants. Project supervisors included a secondary school instructor, five practice-oriented lecturers from Bournemouth University (BU) and student-mentors also from BU. The Year 10 students were divided into four teams, each comprising five students. A BU undergraduate was assigned to mentor each team. The BU faculty members facilitated the production of different types of media assets.
Survey feedback and written endorsements illustrate that students and teachers found these storytelling collaborations powerful educational experiences. In additional to helping participants develop “hard” skills such as story-plotting and scripting, video editing, sound recording, web development and interactive story mapping, they also enhanced “soft” skills related to communication and collaboration. Adolescents who, previously, had little interest in producing media or pursuing a degree in higher education, reported that they found the process empowering and aspirational. In 2018, we worked with an “upper set” group, and in 2019, we worked with a “lower set” group. Although their academic standing was nominally different, both groups were highly engaged with the DISP and both excelled in terms of mastering new skills and inventing original interactive narratives. One of our BU undergraduate mentors had this to say about working with the lower set students: I think it’s trying to bring them out of their shell a little bit. And these guys, I think that it’s been hard to get them there, but when they’re there, then they’ve worked fantastically. I don’t know if they believed they could do something quite like that and now they’re really really engaged, really switched on (Gyori & Pope 2019 n.p.). The overarching aim for both of the projects was to offer access to digital-interactive storytelling to a diverse community, as a means of creative expression. Relative to this aim, our research questions were: 1. How can we ensure that effective experiential learning occurs when students are creating interactive stories? 2. How do students learn from each other and from mentors when creating interactive stories? The following outlines the process employed to devise and evaluate the practical work the students created, and the empirical and scholarly research underpinning this work and its production. We also provide evidence of the participants’ reactions to their involvement in the two recent iterations of the DISP. Finally, we offer some tentative findings and conclusions around the effectiveness of our approach in engaging students of varying abilities and attitudes. We hope this paper will aid educators in devising and delivering digitalinteractive projects of their own. Background Based on previous smaller-scale digital storytelling events, and empirical studies into interface design and user experience (Pope 2006; 2009b; 2010; 2017) the software platform Genarrator was created (Pope 2009a; 2013a), and has been continually re-developed for education and community use. It is a tool which makes it easy and undaunting for school students or other users to create their own digital interactive narratives. Designing, building and publishing a fully working, digital interactive narrative usually involves at least some coding, even in the simplest platforms,
e.g. Twine – Genarrator however, is highly user-friendly and requires minimal digital media know-how. It is a free-to-use, online narrative builder and publishing site, open to anyone. Genarrator has been used extensively in undergraduate teaching at Bournemouth University (Pope 2013 a,b), at other UK universities, and in other school projects. It is the software platform used in the two projects focused upon here. The most recent background to the two projects here was a week-long production carried out at the AIM Central creative hub in Bournemouth. This project served as a kind of pilot for the two versions we analyze in depth here. This iteration exploited Gyori’s experience as a television writer-producer and an education scholar who has studied student-centered learning (Gyori, 2013), the theory-practice divide (Gyori 2016), digital collaboration (Gyori & Charles 2017) and interactive story design (Gyori 2019). The AIM project focused on five vulnerable young people. Over a period of five days, they were tasked with scripting, producing and building a complex narrative entitled, Friend-Zoned. We will refer back to this project below. Follow this link to the project: http://genarrator. org/view/7jf4el44s70pvpgy. A short student-made “documentary” about this project can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSSvcKL3GbU Methodology Action research in theory Employing an Action Research approach (Koshy 2005; McNiff 2013) to note and assess the strengths and weakness of the AIM project, we devised new projects with the Bishop of Winchester Academy in Bournemouth, UK. Action Research has been around for a long time: most scholars acknowledge Kurt Lewin as the originator of the term (see Lewin, 1946). However, as McNiff (2013: 16) notes, “some, especially in higher education, (have) refused to think of practice-based learning and its outcomes as ‘real’ research, or to entertain the idea that practitioner-researchers could generate theory”. Action Research was chosen as an underpinning model for our linked projects because it offers a compatible framework for the kind of situation we were working in, i.e. practice-based investigation in an environment established by the participant school, not entirely in our control, and certainly not laboratory sterile. We argue that practice does, in itself, produce knowledge, and our wish is to capture and disseminate said knowledge. We have, therefore, set out to show how our practiceled research can be developed and delivered in a realworld setting. The researcher will certainly be present and influential, which also seems to run contrary to the conventions of empirical research (see e.g. Denscombe, 2001), but in an Action Research framework this is viewed as an acceptable and necessary mode of critical engagement (Koshy, 2005). Writing in Education 19
According to McNiff, “knowledge is always situated within the groups of people who create it, although its uses for wider influence are potentially infinite” (2013: 17). This understanding of what knowledge can be suits our vision and our practice. We want to show that practice-based insights can generate valuable learning for participants and can also offer up findings, which can be analysed, discussed and used to improve practice. Action Research in practice In order to refine the DISP learning design, we sought feedback through a number of channels including, direct observation, informal chats, formal interviews and written surveys. After both projects, all 40 student participants filled out the survey. There was roughly a 50/50 split of male and female students. Most came from lower-middle to working-class backgrounds. Some of their responses will be included below. When preparing to analyze our findings, we considered several versions of the Action Research model (e.g. Elliott 1991 Kemmis and McTaggart, 2000; O’Leary, 2004). We opted for the Action Research model suggested by McNiff (2013). This approach offers a balanced and realistic appraisal of what Action Research may deliver and also acknowledges its position in current research culture. We quote McNiff’s (p.105) key stages below and offer a few examples of how our practice was informed by this cyclical methodology. ● “We review our current practice”: in the 2016 AIM pilot iteration, we spent much too long on scripting, allowing arguments between the young participants, and indeed differences of opinion between the staff. Therefore, when planning the two most recent projects, we scheduled briefing and scripting sessions before the actual production week, to make sure that all of the allocated production time was effectively exploited. ● “identify an aspect we wish to investigate”: we wanted to see if input by media practitioners supported by undergraduates would motivate a group of fairly reluctant young people and if the week-long activity would produce finished functioning interactive stories. This phase in itself was influenced by reflection following the AIM project. ● “ask focused questions about how we can investigate it”: we spent several hours discussing with the school teachers what would be the best ways to work with the young people. For example, would they be best motivated if they were allowed to choose their own teams, or should the teacher do that, mixing genders, aptitudes, and personalities? Ultimately, we opted to have the teachers take control of the grouping process; however, we did ensure that there was at least one writer, one photographer, and one potential leader in each team. ● “imagine a way forwards”: we needed to build a working party of practitioners and assign undergraduate mentors to work with each schoolstudent team. Planning could then be developed 20 Writing in Education
with these stakeholders in place. We hadn’t used undergraduate mentors in the AIM project, but reflected that the presence of young-adult practitioners, near the age of the Year 10 participants, might well enhance many aspects of the project. ● “try it out and take stock of what happens”: in 2018, one of the undergraduates we recruited to act as a team mentor turned out to be quite shy. As a result, they were not very involved in the production process and tended to sit aside and watch the Year 10 students, rather than help with organizing and offering technical support. To prevent this from happening again, we became much more specific in our recruitment procedure for 2019, making sure that each undergraduate we enlisted had the technical skills to support the Year 10s, but also the personality and attitude to organize and steer the younger students. ● “modify our plan in light of what we have found and continue with the action”: for project 1 in 2018, the Bishop of Winchester Academy offered a sixth former to work with each team of Year 10 pupils. This approach proved unsuccessful, as the sixth formers felt disconnected from the project, so we dropped this element in 2019. ● “evaluate the modified action”: as project 2 developed, we could clearly see that the production process was actually smoother without having the sixth formers involved. ● “and reconsider what we are doing in light of the evaluation”: these reflections are in sections 4 and 5 below. ● “a new action–reflection cycle”: we are currently devising the next project.
Koshy (2005: 21) suggests benefits which the action research approach may bring, and, below, we outline how we experienced some of those benefits: 1. “Research can be set within a specific context or situation”: it was crucial that our work be carried out in a school setting. We wanted to ensure that the Year 10 pupils felt at home in the learning environment and did not feel that they were the subjects of some kind of experiment. 2. “Researchers can be participants – they don’t have to be distant and detached from the situation”: when it comes to organizing and running these projects, the input of the teaching team is important and influential. For example, our university photography specialist had a positive impact on the way the Year 10s conceived and shot their photographic compositions. 3. “There are opportunities for theory to emerge from the research rather than always follow a previously formulated theory”: during the Project 1 presentation session, we learned that the culturally sensitive subject matter of the stories being created could generate problematic
discourses. This challenged us to rethink some of our assumptions about the theory-practice divide. 4. “The study can lead to open-ended outcomes”: in the surveys the students filled out, many of the participants said the project had influenced them to consider enrolling in higher education and possibly pursuing a media career. Student-Centred Learning From the outset, the DISP was conceived as a studentcentered learning initiative. Each iteration of the project has involved some overt instruction, establishing basic guidelines and workflows; but the majority of the educational experience has been driven by the interests and efforts of students. Therefore, the key insights that have emerged all reflect a pedagogic approach that promotes autonomy, critical thinking and high levels of engagement (Barnes, M. 2013, Mccombs, B.L. 2006, Robinson, V. 2011) The following pages organize these insights into two overarching categories: experiential learning, and social learning. We begin with experiential learning, which explores how hands-on pedagogy affects the individual student (Bruner, 2006; Edward Deci, 1971). Next, we focus on social learning. This section considers how students learn from and identify with various peers, stakeholders and support staff (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989; Lave & Wenger 1991). One of the benefits of the student-centred teaching/ learning is that it allows teachers to learn alongside the students we are guiding. In line with the Action Research methodology, each iteration of the project has been an opportunity to rethink and refine our approach. In addition to discussing setbacks, we also wish to celebrate what has worked about the project. In particular, we also acknowledge the highly positive response from the Year 10 students. The written survey that the students filled out after the last two iterations of the DISP included a Likert scale from 1-5 tied to various categories, 1 indicating “strongly disagree” and 5 indicating “strongly agree”. Below are the percentages for categories where students picked number 5: ‘strongly agree’, combining all 40 students in project 1 and project 2: Learned a lot from BU staff - 78% Learned a lot from BU students - 78% Learned about media hardware and software - 61% Learned about interactive narrative structure - 61% Learned about telling stories using a wide range of media - 61%. (Gyori and Pope 2019 n.p. ) NB the sources for the above statistics, and the quotations from feedback surveys which are used below, can all be made available to readers upon request.
Findings and Discussion Experiential Learning Dewey (1893) understood that learning is most effective when it does not feel like learning at all, when students are so immersed in a passion-driven process of problem solving they forget they are acquiring skills and forming new knowledge. This is the experiential dimension of student-centred education. Perhaps paradoxically, in order for students to feel free to experiment and innovate, they first need a clear understanding of the rules of engagement, and these rules must be clear and consistent. This involves an approach that Bruner identified as “instructional scaffolding” (2006). Scaffolding is the educational support necessary to effectively guide student-centered learning. As Yelland and Masters explain: Teacher decisions about the level and type of scaffolding will depend on a number of factors which will include the nature of the task, the needs and interests of the children and the concept/processes involved and opportunities to share ideas with peers or present them to an authentic audience (2005: 380). When supervising the DISP, we noticed that students often worked independently on portions of the research and writing tasks, yet tended to require more support when it came to complex tasks requiring greater technical and aesthetic proficiency, for instance the process of filming video assets for their interactive narratives. When asked about the biggest team challenge that they faced, the most common answer involved filming the scenes. As the teaching team anticipated such challenges, the filming was designed as a highly scaffolded portion of the learning process, with two HE tutors helping to guide this portion of the production process. In practice, scaffolding for the DISP involved establishing clear and consistent production workflows, fixing deadlines and assigning specific roles and goals. Also, as noted by Heron and Steckley (2018: 15), “The scaffolding … should be aimed at enhancing the autonomy and independence of the young people in the co-production process”. In terms of the learning design structure, not all of this needs to be imposed by the teaching team. For instance, allowing the students to decide roles they will perform, helped them feel more in charge of the learning process and thus more invested in its outcomes. For the two projects, the students did almost all of the editing and interface design. This degree of immersion in the production process made for a particularly meaningful learning experience. Year 10 teacher Sarah Dimmer said this about our hands-on approach: “The value is I’ve had a number of students come up to me and say, ‘I see why you taught us this.’ It’s just engagement for them, and they’ve actually had a chance to see what the world of media is like” (Gyori & Pope 2019 n.p.). Writing in Education 21
As for fixed deadlines and schedules related to staff interactions, the student teams tended to thrive within these constraints as long as they were clearly explicated and consistently enforced. Regular “catch-ups” and endof-session roundups appeared to ease anxieties regarding what was expected of them.
As Bandura (1976) points out, participants are not merely controlled by the learning environment, they also help to constitute it, for good or for ill. This is why students must be properly supported, rather than coerced, in a manner that allows them to feel empowered and heard, but also carefully guided through the learning process.
Another balancing act related to experiential learning involves the delicate interplay of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Designing learning experiences based on extrinsic motivation involves creating clear rewards and penalties related to learning requirements. On the other hand, designing learning experiences based on intrinsic motivation involves creating opportunities for students to gain new forms of mastery and also demonstrate this mastery (Deci, 1971).
Social Learning Students are often most invested in the learning process when working alongside others, sharing insights and skills. This allows them to acquire knowledge and skills that can later be deployed without the support of others (Vygotsky 1986).
Reeve (2009) suggests teachers should support autonomy, finding ways to allow students to think and act for themselves. This is especially crucial as students mature because, according to Ryan & Deci (2000) intrinsic motivation appears to become weaker with each advancing grade. As the interactive stories were conceived, written, performed and largely constructed by student teams, there were ample opportunities to harness the power of intrinsic motivation. The stories quickly became passion-driven endeavours that afforded opportunities to shine both as individuals and as a group. Because the DISP leverages intrinsic motivation so effectively, it is easy and perhaps tempting to overestimate the power of this educational driver. For instance, the 2016 iteration of the DISP relied almost entirely on intrinsic motivation. As mentioned earlier, we were working with AIM, a charitable organisation focused on supporting at-risk teens. As there were few extrinsic structures in place, our young participants (ages 17-19) were not compelled to attend the sessions or engage cooperatively with each other or with the teaching team. One issue that arose was related to what might be called the negative side of intrinsic motivation. Although the project afforded opportunities for all participants to shine, particularly charismatic and talented participants were able to command the spotlight more effectively than others. In one case, this led to some jealousy and resentment, as, temporarily, one participant tried to get another participant removed from the project because they felt that the other was getting too much camera time. Subsequent iterations of the DISP have all involved clearly established extrinsic constraints, including mandatory attendance and participation. This has helped to keep students turning up, staying on task and working in a cooperative fashion. We have found that negative behaviours were more likely to result when students feel left out of the process and then stop participating, argue with others, or act out to get attention. In the survey some students mentioned not wanting to work with particular students again. Others complained that some of their peers were not doing enough work. One student felt they were being excluded. 22 Writing in Education
The DISP has a strong social learning dimension. Students work shoulder-to-shoulder with peers, staff and the undergraduate mentors, developing different types of learning based on specific relational dynamics. Each new iteration of the project has constituted an opportunity for our teaching team to establish what Lave and Wenger call a “community of practice” (1991: 22). The Bishop of Winchester teachers acted primarily as project coordinators and support staff. They provided the valuable extrinsic elements, ensuring students turned up, stayed engaged and paid attention to the visiting educators. As a result, students tended to view them as authority figures mandating and enforcing the rules of proper engagement. In contrast, the university staff were tasked with focusing on particular skills (videography, photography, sound design, and web design). Each of us took turns working with the different student teams. Due to our specialised roles, we were viewed as subject matter experts, and as visitors to the school, we found the students welcomed our input. The HE undergraduates engaged with the student teams in a slightly different manner. Rather than work across the teams, each undergraduate was assigned a single team to supervise and mentor. This afforded opportunities for them to develop stronger bonds with a specific group of students. An additional, unintended bonus of this arrangement was the powerful sense of identification many of the younger students formed in relation to these slightly older role models. Our students were ages 20-21 and the Year 10 students were ages 14-15. This four to six-year age difference created a sense of aspirational identification. The younger students might struggle to identify with the older, more experienced HE staff, but it was easy for them to relate to the HE students, and this created opportunities for deeper and more meaningful engagement as they sought the approval and camaraderie of these slightly older mentors. In addition to collaborating with all of the different stakeholders, the year 10 students of course primarily worked with one another, in their production teams. Peer-to-peer collaboration was one of the most powerful dynamics within this community of practice. Frequently, students helped one another gain mastery of everything from technical skills (white-balancing a camera), to communication skills (pitching ideas), to creative
Figure 1. Story Mapping (permission of Bishop of Winchester authors)
writing (inventing a story), to interactive design (testing branching narrative-paths). One Year 10 student who was initially reluctant to participate in the DISP, became increasingly engaged throughout the production process and eventually had this to say about collaborating with their fellow students: “This put us all together like I’ve never seen them like this before. They were so engaged. It brought everyone together. Everyone was happy and everything”. Here are some additional survey responses that reflect the social dimensions of the learning process: “Made me more confident in acting and working in a group’…’I feel like my team did really well with shooting and editing all of it”. Another social dimension of the DISP is Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (1978: 86), noted also by Heron and Steckley (2018). According to this view, effective education experiences challenge learners to reach beyond their present abilities by learning from peers and mentors who model effective behaviors for them (Bandura, 1994). Basawapatna et al (2013: 12) have combined the concepts of flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1975) and the zone of proximal development, coining a new term, “the zone of proximal flow”. This occurs during a social learning process when a whole team of students achieve a simultaneous state of heightened engagement. This is facilitated by striking an effective balance between challenge and skill (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre 1989; Schüler 2007).
Here are some student comments that reflect this state: “Exciting and helped the brain think…”, “I loved using all the types of media…”, “I was happy during the entire project”. Another indication of a positive flow state is that 74% of the students reported that they enjoyed writing stories in this new way more than they enjoy traditional writing. The Year 10 students had little experience organizing camera shots into coherent narrative sequences: therefore, our two video specialists carefully modelled this process. Each started out by directing a sequence of shots and editing “in camera” so that the students could envisage how the dramatic action would play out. Each instructor then asked for a student volunteer to take his place and, with a bit of guidance, direct the next sequence. As the student-director gained increased mastery, the specialist offered fewer and fewer suggestions, allowing the student-director to take control of the filming. Such evolving interactions make it clear learners observe and reproduce skills modelled by others. To help assist in this process, the mentor must create opportunities for the learner to struggle a bit, providing the appropriate level of guidance for their current level of expertise, but no more than that, so they are able to stay in flow and continue stretching toward new learning. When this occurred during the DISP, students who previously seemed disengaged became far more interested and involved in the learning process. Writing in Education 23
Impressed by this increase in student engagement, Year 10 tutor Sarah Dimmer remarked, “For me, I’ve just seen so many young people change. I’ve seen them in a different light, and maybe that’s the biggest thing that I’ve taken from this. I know that they can focus. I know they can do it” (Gyori, B & Pope, J. 2019, n.p.). Conclusions To conclude, we reflect upon our initial research questions and offer thoughts for the development of future such projects. 1. How can we ensure that effective experiential learning occurs when students are creating interactive stories? In order for students to feel able to experiment and innovate, the “rules” must be clear and consistent. In light of this, we feel that the extra pre-production writing and preparation time offered for project 2 was vital for the students to really come to terms with the practicalities of production and engage with their own story ideas. The structural and practical value of this thinking-planning phase seems to us to afford more fruitful creativity once production begins. We have seen how much students like to be challenged, provided the rules of engagement are clear and fair and the outcomes are achievable. Adult input should establish clear and consistent production workflows, with clear and doable deadlines. Specific roles and goals should be assigned. It is important to achieve the right balance between such structural assurances and allowing space for more free creative expression within that instructional scaffold (Bruner 2006). Overall, our teaching team values this process because we have directly observed that it affords deep learning. Time and again, we have seen participant students problem solve, innovate and collaborate, while demonstrating high levels of metacognition. 2. How do students learn from each other and from mentors when creating interactive stories? The creation of a “community of practice” (Lave and Wenger 1991: 122) seems to us to be of central importance if a demanding project is to be completed on time and with a successful end-product. The enthusiasm for the project was undoubted. Here are some typical comments: “If we had more days and time, we could extend it and do more shots and make the story even better…”, “I loved every second of it and I would like to do it again…”, “I’m sad that it is over, but happy that it went well and excited to show everyone…”. Because the Year 10 students find it so enjoyable, they are able learn a great deal from the process of becoming interactive writers, story designers, researchers, directors, performers and producers. This is the power of studentcentred learning.
24 Writing in Education
But we did see that tensions can creep in, as noted above in all three iterations of DISP. This is where the staff team and undergraduate mentors must act to reestablish harmony. In particular the overseeing presence of the school teachers, and the university staff helped to maintain that that sense of community; but we also believe that bringing the undergraduates in as mentors was a key factor in keeping each production team together.
REFERENCES:
Bandura, A. 1976. Social Learning Theory. Cambridge: Pearson. Barnes, M. 2013. Role Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Basawapatna, A., Repenning, A., Koh, K.H., and Nickerson, H. 2013. “The Zones of Proximal Flow: Guiding Students Through a Space of Computational Thinking Skills and Challenges. ICER’13, August 12–14. Botfield, R., Newman, C.E., Lenette, C., Albury, K., and Zwi, A.B., 2018. ‘Using digital storytelling to promote the sexual health and wellbeing of migrant and refugee young people: A scoping review’. Health Education Journal 2018, Vol. 77(7) 735–748 Bruner, J. 2006. In Search of Pedagogy Volume II: The Selected Works of Jerome Bruner, 1979-2006 (World Library of Educationalists). London: Routledge. Csikszentmihalyi, M. & LeFevre, J. 1989. ‘Optimal experience in work and leisure.’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 815–822. Csikszentmihályi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row. Deci, E. L. 1971. ‘Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation.’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18 (1), 105–115. Denscombe, M. 1998. The Good Research Guide. Buckingham: Open University Press. (2001 edition cited) Dewey, J. 1893. ‘Self-Realization as the Moral Ideal.’ The Philosophical Review, 2 (6), 652-664. Elliott, J. 1991. Action Research for Educational Change. Buckingham: Open University Press. Gee, J.P. 2003. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Gyori, B. 2013. ‘Mentorship Modes: Strategies for Influencing Interactive Learners’ Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 7 (1), 172-185. Gyori, B. 2016. “POV X 3: helping journalism students juxtapose author, actor and audience.” Journalism Education, 5 (2), 27-36. Gyori, B. & Charles, M. 2017. ‘Designing Journalists: Teaching Journalism Students to Think Like Web Designers.’ Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 73 (2), 200–217. Gyori, B & Pope, J. 2019. “Digital Storytelling in the Community.” Presented at the 2019 NAWE Conference, November 10, York, UK. Retrieved March 25, 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ KL25ZXGOvg) Gyori, B. 2019. ‘Reanimating Shelley’s Heart: breathing new life into locative learning with dual process design.’ Media Practice and Education, published online: 14 Aug 2019, retrieved at: https://www.tandfonline. com/doi/abs/10.1080/25741136.2019.1650239?journalCode=rjmp21 Heron, G., and Steckley, L., 2018, ‘Digital storytelling using coproduction with vulnerable young people’. Journal of Social Work 0(0) 1–20 Kemmis, K. & McTaggart, R. 2000. ‘Participatory Action Research,’ in N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research. London: Sage. Koshy, V. 2005, Action Research for Improving Practice. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.
org/6d2a/e99c06e7c6b8fadf08fcaa4c8493cecaad95.pdf Lewin, K, 1946. ‘Action Research and Minority Problems,’ Journal of Social Issues 2 (4), 34–46. Lave J. & Wenger, E. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Mccombs, B.L. 2006. Learner-Centered Classroom Practices and Assessments: Maximizing Student Motivation, Learning, and Achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. McNiff, J. 2013, Action Research: Principles and Practice (Third edition). Oxford: Routledge. O’Leary, Z. 2004. The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: Sage. Pope, J. 2006. ‘A Future for Hypertext Fiction.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 12.4, 447-465. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856506068368 Pope, J. 2009a. ‘The design and development of Genarrator at Bournemouth University. Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education, 8, 157-167. Pope, J. 2009b. ‘Twists in the Digital Tale.’ Interjunction. Pope, J. 2010. ‘Where Do We Go from Here? Readers’ Responses to Interactive Fiction: Narrative Structures, Reading Pleasure and the Impact of Interface Design.’ Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 16.1, 75-94. https://doi. org/10.1177/1354856509348774 Pope, J. 2013a. ‘A Writing Tool for New Media Storytellers.’ The Literary Platform. Retrieved from http://theliteraryplatform.com/ magazine/2013/07/a-writing-tool-for-new-media-storytellers/ Pope, J. 2013b. The Way Ahead: The Teaching of Hyper-narrative at Bournemouth University. New Writing, 10.2, 206-218. Pope, J. 2017. ‘Further on Down the Digital Road: Convergence Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 26.1,35-54 Ryan, Richard M.; Deci, Edward L. 2000. ‘Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions.’ Contemporary Educational Psychology. 25 (1), 54–67. Reeve, J. 2009. ‘Why Teachers Adopt a Controlling Motivating Style Toward Students and How They Can Become More Autonomy Supportive.’ Educational Psychologist. 44 (3), 159–175. Robinson, V. 2011. Student-Centered Leadership. San Francisco: JosseyBass. Sadik, A., 2008. ‘Digital storytelling: a meaningful technology-integrated approach for engaged student learning’. Education Tech Research Dev (2008) 56:487–506 Schüler, J. 2007. ‘Arousal of Flow Experience in a Learning Setting and
its Effects on Exam Performance and Affect.’ Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie, Vol. 21, p. 217-227. Vygotsky, L. S. 1986. Thought and Language. Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Yelland, N. & Masters, J. 2007. ‘Rethinking Scaffolding in the Information Age.’ Computers and Education, 48 (3), 362–382.
Dr Brad Gyori is Principal Academic in Digital Storytelling at Bournemouth University, UK. He is the Programme Leader for the MA in Creative Writing and Publishing. He also teaches journalism students how to make interactive documentaries. In addition to working as a writer-producer for such networks as MTV, VH1, E!, FX and HBO, he was the head writer of the Emmy winning series Talk Soup. He has been nominated for 5 Emmys. His theatrical works have been presented by Steppenwolf theatre, Phoenix Theatre, Bournemouth Emerging Arts Fringe and Poole Lighthouse. He is co-director of the media arts conglomerate Doppelganger Productions. His articles have appeared in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, Interactive Storytelling, Journalism Education, The Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, Media Practice and Education, Flow and many others. Dr James Pope is a Principal Academic at Bournemouth University. As well as several publications around his research into the reading and writing of digital fiction, James has also published six novels for children and teenagers. His interests are: how digital media are changing narrative forms and writing practices; the teaching of creative writing, particularly in digital media environments; and children’s literature. He is the co-founder and co-organisor of the annual international New Media Writing Prize, and created Genarrator, a free-to-use online digital storytelling tool. He co-curated the ICIDS digital storytelling exhibition in 2020. His most recent publication is ‘Jenny’s Story’, in Women’s Artistic Gymnastics. Eds. Kerr, Barker-Ruchti, Stewart, and Kerr, Routledge, 2020. Writing in Education 25
UK and US
Divided by a common language? Josh Schultheis WHY DO SOME STUDENTS HATE WRITING? What would I tell them? Some kind of hook, right? Damn...how to begin? Shouldn’t have said, “damn.” That’s going to turn some readers off. This is so out of order. My God… ...I’m doing it to myself… ...again! I’m just so frustrated with the general concept of writing “correctly.” It’s morphed from a useful guide to help me understand and relate what I’m trying to communicate, to a self imposed crack of a whip that keeps me from saying anything at all! Even now, the nagging voice in the back of my skull keeps shaming me with cutting reminders of, “that isn’t a good hook...referring to yourself in 1st person doesn’t make sense here...none of this makes sense, and no one will read it.” I know I’ve totally thrust this neurosis on myself with the path I’ve chosen in life by becoming an English teacher in the United States, but that is exactly why I can’t ignore it anymore. It’s made me begin to almost resent something I dearly love: the boundless possibility of literature and writing. It’s why I became an English teacher, which I’ve loved doing for years, but the more time you spend with something, even something you love, the more those problematic cracks you barely noticed before begin to erode into craters you can no longer ignore. George Bernard Shaw reputedly said, “The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language,” and I have often wondered if our system in the US for language is as divided from the UK as I may think. Teaching English and Writing in the US public school system has opened my eyes to fundamental issues in the way young people are being exposed to the concepts of writing and literature in English classes, real
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issues I have battled for years, and honestly don’t know if I have the strength to fight anymore. How divided is the system for teaching English and Writing in the US from the UK? Do we face the same issues as teachers, or is it all completely different? This may just be catharsis, but, hey, that’s as good a reason to write as any. I guess some brief explanation is in order as to why the author of this travesty to socially acceptable writing is taking the time to release these frustrations. I am a high school English teacher in the US, and have been for a number of years now. Teaching has opened my mind to a couple of realizations that push me further and further from the profession every year, the main realization being, “I love teaching, but I absolutely hate schools in the United States.” Even now, it sounds strange, but it couldn’t be more true based on a number of realities I’ve been faced with as a teacher, the first of which I may be able to illustrate most smoothly with a familial example. A while back, I was editing an essay my sister had to write in order to get into medical school. She comes to me for writing help every so often when she needs it. More or less, her task was to discuss her reasoning for why she wanted to become a doctor: fairly straightforward. Obviously, I did my part as the English teacher: corrected grammar, fixed passive voice issues, made things sound pretty, and all other typical “make this good” writing help. My sister, just as a brief disclaimer, is a borderline genius. Perfect GPA. Multiple college scholarships. She outdid her brother (me) in almost every capacity growing up. For some random shmo headed to the hospital, she’s pretty much the exact background you want in a person to help you with that eye-melting rash you have on your upper back, the origins of which are completely unknown. What weirded me out was that she could not have been more stressed out about THIS particular portion of the application; the essay, in which she just had to talk about why she wanted to be a doctor, which
has been her life goal since we were in diapers. “I suck at writing. I hate it,” she groaned, hands covering her face in shame, shoulders slunk in self-assigned inadequacy. She was more or less shook by this banal task. I was utterly stunned. As I did my best to help and console my crestfallen sibling, a nagging notion kept striking me at the back of my skull: “This?...You HATE this?” She literally was writing about the main passion she wished to pursue for the rest of her life. Her own choice. HOW could she HATE this? What I have come to realize is that it’s not the topic that she hated; my sister, like so many other young people in the US, has been conditioned to HATE writing by the way she has been taught the subject her entire life. This general point of view is what I see with almost every student I have every single year. “I suck at writing. I hate writing.” I hear this phrase from the mouths of my students far more than “Hello,” “Thank you,” or even “Can I use the restroom?” Well, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea. Students hate writing. Even my sister, a bonafide nerd, HATES writing, even if the subject is something she is passionate about. Early on in my career, this was confusing to me, but I eventually began to see that this was not an innate human feature. The general hatred of writing is bred in the way students are taught how to write throughout their lives, and the main medium in which students learn about what writing is, is the essay. The essay is the archaic bane of my existence as a high school English teacher. After teaching English at the secondary level in the US for a number of years, I have come to a major realization about the essay as it pertains to the American education system: the concept of the essay is killing writing
potential in the minds of young people. Writing at its core, possibly one of the most subjective and open ended avenues in human existence, is taken and subjugated into categories that a young person must adhere to in order to “learn what good writing is” as if it is a math equation that can be solved. Expository, Argumentative, Informative, Descriptive, Narrative: these are all styles of writing taught to students throughout their lives. There is nothing wrong with learning about and trying out the different stylings of writing. That’s explorative, and is the entire point of going to school in general: to experience as many new things as possible before you have to go out into the real world and survive. However, that is not how the styles are taught. Writing styles are taught and graded like mathematical formulas: intro, body, conclusion; hook, claim, counterclaim, rebuttal; claim, evidence, interpretation. I could go on and on. It’s mathematical and calculated, and students are graded on “how well” they argued a point, or “how strong” a hook was in their introduction, etc. Teachers assign categorical points from some of the most painstakingly rigidly structured grading rubrics to completely subjective topics. It is totally counterintuitive and not fair to the student. I know because I have had to do it myself all too often. Let’s use a far too real hypothetical example. Hypothetically, there is a category called “introduction” in the essay rubric worth 10 pts, with a bullet point saying something like, “Strong hook that connects smoothly with thesis.” Here is some feedback that is eerily similar to what I have written hundreds of times on student essays. “Well, Jace, how you connected the hook to your thesis is pretty weak, so I’m going to have to take off a few points in that category.” What does “weak” mean? It’s arbitrary. It’s subjective. Another teacher could think something completely different about what Jace Writing in Education 27
just wrote. That is what makes writing BEAUTIFUL, that someone can have a completely different reaction to what Jace wrote about turtles in Syria (again, hypothetically, but definitely some potential there…), but Jace (not a real student) now feels that what he wrote is “bad” because his teacher gave him a mathematical score that says so. He’s 15 years old! Of course his writing is going to improve the more he does it, but because he has been told mathematically exactly how much his writing is worth since he was six years old, Jace hates writing. Naturally Jace isn’t going to like being told something he emotionally invested in (because that is what writing is) wasn’t “good” (look at the score), so now he hates it. He shuts down to the concept so he doesn’t have to face the feelings that go along with being told that “your ideas aren’t good.” That hurts. For anyone. To be told that an original idea that you had isn’t very good is so intensely emotionally and psychologically worse than getting a random math problem wrong on a test. To give this kind of writing a score like this fundamentally makes no sense, so WHY ON EARTH DO WE GRADE THESE CLASSES AS IF THEY GO HAND IN HAND?! Do things like this only happen in the United States? Now, “Jace” of course is not a real student, but he epitomizes the state of the vast majority of young people in the modern education system in the US. I absolutely love literature and writing because of its boundless possibilities! That two people like EE Cummngs and David Foster Wallace can both fall under the category of “author,” and write so completely differently is amazing! That is what writing and literature should be: that chance for a human being to connect with something very intimate, and to realize things about themselves and their own thoughts that they hadn’t considered before. It is there that I love teaching: to give a young person the chance to experience something like that. That is why I got into it to begin with. To literally quantify those experiences by scoring them on a “how good is this scale” undercuts any future possibilities a young mind might create using this avenue. I have seen far too many extremely creative minds brimming with potential having already given up on literature and writing because they have been bred to believe they are not good at it, so they don’t want to explore it. Writing is SO emotionally charged, and emotional rejection for any human can totally turn them off to something. That is what is happening to students. They would rather fake it (“How long does this have to be?”) than actually get emotionally invested because, as I said, that rejection hurts. We are undercutting any potential before it has a chance to blossom.
Standardized testing has gained a lot of importance in modern education because it is one of the measures of accountability that is placed on modern schools. Again, without getting too far into the nitty gritty of education, a few years ago, the general perspective was that schools were in a bad place: students not getting the quality of education they needed to be successful in the future; apathetic, unionized teachers seemingly doing nothing in the classroom because they had no one to answer to; the American education system plummeting lower and lower on the international scale. If you have ever seen the documentary Waiting for Superman, then you know exactly what I am referring to (I literally wept when I watched it, and vowed to become a teacher that day). The overall perception was that things were not as good as they could be, and several measures were taken to increase accountability of schools to make sure students were getting a better education: intense evaluation of teachers, new common standards, etc (the list goes on and on). A lot of things were changing, and a massive emphasis was put on standardized testing. The worth of your school correlates with your test scores. Accountability for the kids. It all makes sense... Is it all an overcorrection? Yes. (And don’t think for a second I am saying teachers were lazy. Yeah, some were. What industry doesn’t have lazy people working in it from time to time? The teachers I know work their butts off.) However, that is not the point. The point is that the three major areas of standardized testing, Math, Science, and English, have a gigantic emphasis put on them, especially if you are teaching that subject. If your scores are low, you may get fired. That goes into your evaluation as a teacher. Math and Science are subjects that can be tested in a standardized fashion with relative ease, especially Math. Here is a question or equation, solve it until you reach the correct answer. Great. A logical path to follow to the end. The problem is that English is one of these categories, which is a subject that could not be further from this system of thinking.
So why do we do this? If this way of evaluation is so egregiously wrong, why does it happen? Well, it all stems with the current trend of modern US education: an overcorrection in accountability.
At its core, English is the art of human communication and interpretation, and human communication is one of the most complex, confusing anomalies to even begin to try to understand, let alone understand “correctly”. What does that even mean when it comes to humans? You can never fully understand a human being. How on Earth can we have a standardized test that fully encompasses that?! This is a concept with billions of “correct” possibilities, as long as you have a mind that can make sense of it. English intrinsically isn’t a subject that has objectively correct answers (other than grammar, maybe, but even that is evolving). However, that is exactly what it must be. It must be a subject that can be widely tested like the other two core subjects so that we can make sure teachers are staying accountable for their students. A rigid, definitively scored test anyone can take.
Without getting too far into it, there are three core areas in the modern US education system: English, Math, and Science. Those are the three areas students in which are tested while in high school (at least where I teach), with a bit more of an emphasis on Math and English.
So, how does a teacher get a student ready? Mirror that structure in the class. Give objective scores to some of the most fluid, open ended concepts in the world. It is a paradox, and it frustrates me to my core as something that is part of my job. I got into teaching English
28 Writing in Education
because of its fluidity and lack of completely correct answers. That is what is fun about it: to give students an opportunity to realize the beautifully complex, everchanging multiplicity of humanity, and give them a mind that WANTS to think differently next year than it does this year without someone telling it to. To quantify this ability as if it were a mathematical equation is senseless (no offense to math; it’s obviously intensely important, but far from a similar subject) . We simply can’t keep teaching literature and writing like this, or at least I can’t. So, what exactly needs to change, and how? Obviously, the rigid nature of how students are graded in English classes. English class should be so completely different from other classes. Don’t do away with grades, but restructure what is evaluated and how it’s done. It’s really hard to have an exact method and calculated procedure because THAT IS NOT WHAT LITERATURE AND WRITING IS, at least not at the secondary level. It is going to take a tremendous amount of trust in the teacher. To teach English requires an INSANE amount of creativity for it to be effective and engaging. Think about the best teachers you had. They were different, and if you think that’s easy, it’s not. A good teacher works really hard to make things look really easy. A great English teacher needs to be involved, devoted, intensely creative, and a genuinely self-motivated person, because that is what is required by the nature of the beast of literature and writing. They should be the kind of person that doesn’t need to fear an impending test to be motivated to do their job, because they understand that it is impossible to definitively test what makes this class what it is. That is what students deserve. To try to understand human nature and communication is so confusing no matter how old you are (...dating alone can be frustrating to understand), young people need someone at the helm who is exceptionally creatively talented enough to place them in situations to use writing as a tool to flesh out new features of themselves and human beings that they had not considered before. They need to be a person who can see that most human problems have a lot of answers that CAN make sense, and expose their students to that nature of thought in real world ways that the young mind can connect with. To be a great English teacher is very hard, but so are a lot of intensely important occupations.
self sacrificing, “bleeding heart” trope, giving everything they are for others and not wanting compensation. That teacher is someone who will put up with low pay and a crappy work environment because they are doing something that is “bigger than themselves,” which is a frame of mind that can work for a short time, but is rarely a life that will realistically last. Teachers leave the profession A LOT. There is constant talk of shortages in the United States for a reason. Those exceptional, creative minds don’t want to make the lifestyle sacrifices, so they choose other avenues, or they realize the ends don’t justify the means, and find a new career elsewhere. If we are truly serious about our education system, then make teaching a career that young people will actually want to pursue for the long haul. As of now there is no trust, freedom, or professional compensation, so why would most people realistically stick with the profession of teaching? It’s a cliche notion nowadays I suppose, the plight of teachers, but humans want to live a fulfilling life. So what does this all mean? Well...the way English and Writing is taught in the US needs to change! I know that real dramatic change is hard to come by. I’m not expecting it. Almost nothing hugely important that needs to happen is fast acting. Human beings are complacent creatures who fear what they are not comfortable with. Heck, I extended my lease another year on my apartment because I was scared of having to look for a new one. I know that more than likely, nothing is going to change because of what I have written, but that isn’t why I wrote it. I wrote it because I needed to. I wrote it because I have had some feelings bubbling up inside of me for years now, and writing gave me the avenue to connect with it, even if no one other than myself reads these words. I always hope there is some change in the future for the US and how we approach English and writing, and continue to wonder just how wide that divide in our common language is between ourselves and the UK.
The difference between those other occupations that require those rare exceptional minds and teaching English is that those other professions have a much higher ceiling as far as professional success is concerned. For so long, great teachers have been associated with the
Josh Schultheis is an educator and writer living in Indianapolis, Indiana in the United States. He is a graduate of Indiana University with a degree in Secondary English Education. He has been teaching English, Literature, and Writing for the past several years in the United States in the public school system at the secondary level, and is currently teaching and developing students in the Indianapolis area.
Writing in Education 29
Rhymes and Rondeaux Sarah Bower and Ingrid Perrin WRITING THE BODY WITH WORDS AND MUSIC I recently collaborated with the cellist Ingrid Perrin on a creative writing workshop we entitled Rhymes and Rondeaux, which used music as an inspiration for writing. We began our planning with the precise song and poetic form of the rondeau, agreeing with Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize citation, that songs can create “new poetic expressions”1 We originally started discussing this collaboration before the Covid pandemic and had envisaged running a face to face workshop for adult participants at all levels of experience, at the Dragon Hall campus of the National Centre for Writing in Norwich, but by the time the workshop was scheduled, we had stepped through the looking glass into the virtual world of Zoom. The workshop was structured in two halves, each lasting about an hour. Each half started with a performance on the cello of a wide range of short pieces. These were chosen to offer variations in mood, pace and performance style. A complete playlist can be found below. The first performance consisted of two Purcell rondeaux arranged by Ingrid for two cellos and cello with piano accompaniment respectively. During the workshop Ingrid played live to the pre-recorded tracks. She then explained and deconstructed the rondeau. The musical form is believed to derive from the poetic structure of the medieval rondeau, one of the three formes fixes of French poetry from the 13th to the 15th centuries, the other two being the ballade and the virelai or lai. In both words and music, the rondeau is made up of alternating refrains and stanzas and is believed to have originated as dance songs, with chorus and soloist taking the different parts.
We then moved on to writing exercises in which students were divided into smaller groups in breakout rooms and invited to collaborate, with the musical model in mind, on making a poem using one of a range of alternative poetic forms. As preparation for this we gave them examples of several different forms to read, including the celebrated Dylan Thomas villanelle, Do Not Go Gentle2 and Shakespeare’s sonnet 183. My aim in choosing such well known poems was to defamiliarize them for the participants by considering them through the lens of form rather than content, to provoke them to make different and more critical readings of works with which most, if not all, were familiar. When listening to music, I would suggest we perceive form first; we pick up rhythms, repetitions, runs of notes. When we read, however, we tend to think first in terms of language and meaning. We also shared a contemporary pantoum, A. E. Stallings’ Another Lullaby for Insomniacs4, and allowed Swinburne to do our work for us where the English roundel was concerned: A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere, (A) With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought, (B) That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear (A) A roundel is wrought. (R) Its jewel of music is carven of all or of aught - (B) Love, laughter, or mourning - remembrance of rapture or fear - (A) That fancy may fashion to hang in the ear of thought. (B)
1 The Nobel Prize in Literature 2016. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2021. Fri. 11 Jun 2021. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/ literature/2016/summary/> 2 Thomas D. (1952) In Country Sleep and Other Poems London: Dent 3 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45087/sonnet-18-shall-i-compare-thee-to-a-summers-day accessed 30/07/2021 4 Stallings A. E. ‘Another Lullaby for Insomniacs’, Poetry Magazine, April 2004, p. 3 30 Writing in Education
As a bird’s quick song runs round, and the hearts in us hear (A) Pause answer to pause, and again the same strain caught, (B) So moves the device whence, round as a pearl or tear, (A) A roundel is wrought. (R)5 As shown, we marked up the rhyme schemes and repetitions for each poem to give guidance to the participants, as well as summarising the structure of each form for them. The forms covered were the English roundel, the English sonnet, the pantoum and the sestina. We discovered that, in the time available, group work produced only rough drafts, which was not entirely surprising given the complexity of the task. However, we achieved the aim of encouraging participants to think about the power and musicality of formal constraints in writing and how these relate to rhetorical devices such as repetition, parataxis and hypotaxis, and thematic or imagistic linking. This process also helped to break the ice for the online participants and to “warm up” writing “muscles”. It achieved a “shaking loose” of participants’ creativity which resulted in some engaging writing during the second session. As feedback from one participant suggests, it did provoke some interesting creative thinking: …my reading led me into the confused realms of the “impure pantoum”, an image which conjures up curious flights of fancy. An enjoyable pun on the concept of formal impurity when a poem deviates from the form in which it is written. Rupert Brooke’s superbly cynical Sonnet Reversed6 5 6 7 8
is a fine example of this kind of playful subversion. Our main focus for the second half of the workshop was less on the ways in which musical structure might inspire and inform our writing and more on how the physicality of playing might inspire words. How can we use language to inscribe the body, in which we all live and which inevitably determines our lives? This relates to my own creative and critical writing PhD research, which is using fiction to explore the body - as Olivia Laing (2021) says, “not…whole or undamaged or unaugmented… always changing, changing, changing, a fluid form…”7 - as a site of historical inscription. I am writing a two period historical novel set among the women who stitched the early Montgolfier hot air balloons and the machinists at Playtex who made the Apollo spacesuits. I am interested in the workers’ bodies as sold bodies but also in the fetishized bodies of the astronauts and early balloon pilots who submitted to experimentation in flight and the “deviant” bodies of French revolutionaries and civil rights and anti-war protestors in the 1960s.8 Having to adapt our plans for Zoom inevitably changed the nature of the interaction, both between Ingrid and myself as the creative writing tutor (we were in our respective homes rather than physically in the same place), and between us and the workshop participants. Most significantly, we could not now establish a physical dynamic based on a group of people working together in the same room. However, because we were by this time in the second lockdown, we were all growing used to working remotely and we received some very positive feedback:
Swinburne A. C. The Roundel https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45301/the-roundel accessed 30/07/2021 Brooke, R. (1914) Sonnet Reversed https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43715/sonnet-reversed accessed 29/07/2021 Laing, O. (2021) Everybody. London: Picador, p. 309 These definitions and distinctions are discussed in Brooks, P. (1984), Reading for the Plot, New York: Knopf, pp. 143 - 170 Writing in Education 31
It was an insightful introduction to the world of creative writing and music and has further increased my confidence in switching to a career in writing. It’s not too late and there is hope, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to learn and grow! Ingrid opened the second session with a programme of short cello pieces in a wide variety of styles. Participants were asked to focus, not just on the music but on the cellist in the physical act of playing. All musical performance is, of course, intensely physical, predicated entirely on the interaction of the human body with the instrument, but there is, to my mind, something unique in the relationship between the cellist and their instrument. The cello shares its nubile curvaceousness with the rest of its family, but projects a powerful erotic charge because of where it sits, between the player’s knees. The way in which it moves with the player’s body is more organic. It seems less like an appendage and more like an integral part of the player’s body. It is also said, and my ears would certainly concur, that the cello’s range is the closest to the human voice of any instrument. We encouraged workshop participants not only to listen to the music but to observe the playing, the way in which the body interpreted the notation and translated it into sound. Clearly the process of observation was changed by moving the workshop online but there were positive aspects to this. The intervention of the camera disinhibited the process of observation for participants, who might have felt constrained, in a face to face setting, by the conventions of the relationship between audience and performer. While not all would have been comfortable moving around Ingrid’s physical playing space in order to make close observations, all were content to watch the live video in a close, critical way which would facilitate their writing. While the camera, being unavoidably fixed, was limited in the angles of vision it could convey, it helped to free up imaginative and speculative engagement. That said, we collected some anecdotal evidence that participants were reluctant to attempt to inhabit the cellist’s body in their writing because she was, in a sense, present with them, on screen while they were writing. We have not been able to follow up on the workshop to see if this would change were participants undertaking exercises after the event. The writing which arose from this second session, and which participants were prepared to share in class, was predominantly prose. Several were happy to read aloud to the group whereas none had been willing to do this with the rather provisional work undertaken in the first half. The prose pieces shared demonstrated how participants had used their observations and reflections on the relationship between music and the body as the foundation for a range of fiction and non-fiction pieces, for which watching and listening to Ingrid’s performance was a catalyst. Some, however, took it as more direct inspiration. One participant later submitted a poem by email to the National Centre for Writing, entitled Ode to a Cellist’s Eyebrows.
This was a great second half of the workshop, and unexpected. I am always drawn to look at eyebrows, possibly because my name Gwendoline comes from the Celtic gwyn, meaning blessed, and dolen meaning eyebrows. Thank you to Gwendoline Coates for permission to quote from her poem: Grand movements of the bowing arm, strong fingers placed with skill to make the cello sing, whole body sways. Yet I am drawn to watch the eyebrows, lowered in concentration, solemn to begin. It was wonderful to see this evidence of the poet’s understanding that looking behind and around the conventional observation of instrumental technique can reveal something fresh and unique about the player’s relationship to her instrument and the work she performs with it. What do the raised eyebrows signify? Perhaps a questioning, an opening up of the player to the beginning of this performance, which will be like no other she has given. Perhaps what in others might be a frown of concentration. What can be seen of the body, and what it consciously and unconsciously performs, is both literally and metaphorically only skin deep. Yet the body is what each of us lives in and looks out from and what bounds and defines our sense of our self in the world. I have recently begun to expand my thinking on ekphrastic practice, with an emphasis on the relationship between needlework and writing (which also informed my first novel, The Needle in the Blood, whose subject is the Bayeux Tapestry), through participation in a panel discussion of Lorina Bulwer9 whose extraordinary embroidered diatribes are curated by the Norfolk Museums Service. While much of the conversation focused on the content of her work, I was particularly interested in her process, in the physical strength it would have taken to embroider such dense text through two or three thicknesses of fabric in a process reminiscent of Bengali kantha quilting. This expression of her intense emotions seems to me as important as the words used. The way Lorina implicated her body in the creation of her samplers is as meaningful as what she embroidered on them. Our bodies define the world we have made as much as being products of this planet’s specific physical attributes. Our houses, our factories, our cityscapes and transportation systems, our politics and the realms of our imaginations, are determined by the limits of what our bodies can do. When we leave the atmosphere for which we are adapted we have to encase our bodies in clothing which recreates it in order to survive. It is clearly time for us to consider the limits of our evolutionary possibility and what happens when our atmosphere deserts us rather than us travelling beyond it, and it is my hope that the themes I will address in my historical fiction and accompanying theoretical work will have something
9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorina_Bulwer A useful introduction which links to a range of interesting blogs and learning resources relating to Lorina. 32 Writing in Education
useful to say to us today and in what looks like a rapidly diminishing future about how we can reset the balance between our bodies and their lifelines. I think this is also a useful framework for teaching which will engage students with some of the pressing issues of our times, not just the climate crisis but how the bodies we live in determine our intellectual and emotional wellbeing. The approach Ingrid and I took to the different ways in which musical performance might inspire writing is an effective route into thinking and writing widely about the human condition.
References
Playlist for Rhymes and Rondeaux Workshop
https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/
Purcell:
Rondeau from The Fairy Queen
Purcell:
Rondeau from Abdelazer
Brooks, P. (1984) Reading for the Plot. New York: Knopf Laing, O. (2021) Everybody. London: Picador
You can find out more about the National Centre for Writing here:
(Rondeaux arranged for cello and piano and for two cellos by Ingrid Perrin) Vivaldi:
Largo from A minor Cello Sonata
Puccini: West
Ch’Ella Mi Creda from La Fanciulla del
Puccini:
Lucevan le Stelle from Tosca
Bach:
Prelude from the 1st Solo Cello Suite
Purcell:
Aria trans. David Popper
Britten: (excerpt)
Canto terzo from Suite for Cello Op. 72
Schumann: (excerpt)
Fünf Stücke im Volkston – II Langsam
Paradies:
Sicilienne (omitted)
Alan Gout:
My Blue Cello Sarah Bower is an Associate Lecturer in creative writing at the Open University. She has also taught at the University of East Anglia and Lingnan University in Hong Kong. Based in Norwich, she regularly works with the National Centre for Writing www. nationlacentreforwriting.org.uk on a range of events and workshops. She is the author of three novels, most recently Erosion, writing as S. A. Hemmings. Her first novel, The Needle in the Blood, won the Susan Hill Award 2007. Her short fiction and non-fiction has been published in MsLexia, Spiked, QWF and The Yellow Room and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She is currently working towards a PhD in creative and critical writing at the Open University. Ingrid Perrin is a cellist/teacher. She teaches online and has recently played for the Self Isolation String Quartet recording of Mr Blue Sky and a Latin American concert live-streamed from the Theatre Royal Norwich with the Rojas String Quartet. She has worked on the RPO Share Sound project with students from all over Norfolk. Ingrid started her career as cellist/ MD at the National Theatre and toured with Lumière and Son Theatre Company, as well as recording for ABC, Elvis Costello and Heaven 17. She is currently rebooking her string quartet and cello/piano duo for the many weddings postponed by the pandemic. https://www.instagram.com/ingrid_perrin/?hl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X49GGCro9l8
Writing in Education 33
Going Online Trevor Day A COMMUNITY’S EXPERIENCE OF TRANSFORMING FACE-TO-FACE WRITING WORKSHOPS, TUTORIALS AND RETREATS TO ONLINE In the last 18 months, in response to COVID-19 lockdowns, you – as a writer and educator – will have had to grapple with taking your tutorials, seminars, workshops and other learning interactions online. In a recent article in Writing in Education, Ursula Canton and I (Day and Canton, 2021) wrote about a particular community of writers and educators – the Royal Literary Fund’s Consultant Fellows. In this article I report on this community’s experiences of, and solutions to, ‘going online’.
is with postgraduates (taught and research), researchers (mostly early- to mid-career) and occasionally with administrative and managerial university staff.
The Royal Literary Fund’s Consultant Fellows (CFs) form an unusual community. Well-published authors, from novelists, poets and dramatists to journalists, biographers and science writers, they have been successful Royal Literary Fund (RLF) Writing Fellows, tutoring students one-to-one in universities. By invitation, they can then undergo a nine-month training developing their abilities as facilitators of learning interventions, such as workshops and writing retreats. If they graduate successfully from the training they can join the register of RLF Consultant Fellows (Day and Swinburne, 2017). They are independent learning facilitators but the RLF supports their continuing professional development, and through fostering regular meetings (formerly face-to-face and now online) and through a website, forums and blogs, it supports CFs as a community of practice (Wenger, 1998). Currently, 30 Consultant Fellows are on the CF register, with about 20 highly active in providing writing workshops and other interventions online for about 60 HEIs in the UK and abroad (https://rlfconsultants.com/). Most of their work
Course designs
34 Writing in Education
In this article I describe and explain some of the CF responses to going online. Our solutions may be unlike yours given that your context might be rather different. Nevertheless, I hope that some of our solutions will resonate with yours and others will stimulate you to reflect on your practice and consider new options.
Our course designs are shaped by several core concerns. As far as possible, we tailor courses to specific purposes and participants. We explore with the university client what they perceive to be the writing challenges for students, and where possible, we gather further information from the students themselves. We adopt constructive alignment, arranging activities and forms of assessment in order to achieve intended learning outcomes (Biggs & Tang, 2011). However, any intended learning outcomes we set are a minimum expectation. Often, we seek to foster attitudinal change and confidence-building. We recognise that simplistic application of learning styles theory is deeply flawed – students may have learning preferences, but these are expressed differently in different contexts (Coffield et al, 2004; Pashler et al, 2009). We encourage self-reflection and recognise the value of peer feedback in students co-constructing their knowledge and developing their practice through working with others (Nicol, 2020). So,
Thinking critically & writing critically A sample workshop plan for 2 x 90-min online sessions Learning outcomes By the end of the course you should be able, or better able, to: • • • •
explain the nature of critical thinking and critical writing create persuasive arguments in a well-structured report, thesis or research paper use evidence, reasoning and correct use of citations to strengthen your argument review and edit your own and others’ writing, to strengthen its power and precision
Timetable for Session 1 09:55–10:00. Participants gather in waiting room. 10:00–10:10. Session starts. Greetings. How the sessions will work. The tension between criticality and creativity. The skills involved in critical thinking. 10:10–10:25. Activity 1. Being critical, from start to finish. In small groups in breakout rooms. Reporting back. 10:25–10:35. Developing an argument. 10:35–10:45. Activity 2. Argument or not? In small groups in breakout rooms. Reporting back. 10:45–10:50. Short break. 10:50–10:55. What characterises effective critical writing? 10:55–11:15. Activity 3. Using verbs with precision. Individually. Reporting back. 11:15–11:25. Activity 4. Comparing two paragraphs. Preparation for homework. 11:25–11:30. Thank you and an outline of next steps. Shortly after the session you will be emailed the slides from this session (with the group’s findings) along with further notes plus the timetable and activities for tomorrow’s session. Timetable for Session 2 09:55–10:00. Gather in Zoom waiting room. 10:00–10:15. Session starts promptly. Discussing Activity 4. Which abstract is better written? Whole group discussion and compilation of findings. 10:15–10:20. Characteristics of weak critical writing. 10:20–10:30. Activity 5. Straw men. In small groups in breakout rooms. Reporting back. 10:30–10:40. Critiquing another person’s work. 10:40–10:45. Using sources effectively. 10:45–10:50. Short break. 10:50–11:05. Activity 6. Sequencing can be critical to the strength of your argument. In small groups in breakout rooms. Reporting back. 11:05–11:20. Activity 7. Putting the pieces together. Copyediting. In pairs in breakout rooms. Reporting back. 11:20–11:25. Rhetoric: the art of persuasion. 11:25–11:30. Conclusion, thank you and following up. Activity 8. Rhetoric: Optional follow on activity. Shortly after the session you will be emailed the slides from this session (including findings) along with accompanying notes and a link to an online feedback questionnaire. TD, June 2021
Figure 1. An extract from a Critical Thinking and Critical Writing course design for doctoral students. The course is finetuned according to discipline.
we prioritise groupwork and interactivity in our course designs, recognising that students may have different learning preferences, and as far as possible make the sessions multi-modal, but with a carefully constructed narrative arc. An extract from a sample online course design is shown in Figure 1. This course, run as two 90-minute sessions on consecutive days, replaced a half-day face-to-face workshop. In shifting our course designs from face-toface (F2F) to online, we quickly established that half-day and one-day workshops would need to be deconstructed and reshaped into something rather different. The practice literature makes clear that facilitators and participants suffer from ‘Zoom fatigue’ if they are engaging online for extended periods (Blum, 2020; Sklar, 2020; Ramachandran, 2021). So, we typically responded by reworking courses into 90-minute or 120-minute online sessions, with a short break in the middle of each. A half-day F2F course might be split into two 90-minute online sessions, with sessions run on consecutive days or one week apart (Figure 1); a whole-day course might be converted into two 120-minute online sessions. We encourage participants to write away from the screen at times and we have them working in different combinations (pairs, small group and whole group) to inject variety, heighten interaction, minimise fatigue from physical inertia and to encourage viewing onscreen windows in different ways. Commonly, students do individual writing tasks with their video off and audio temporarily muted. I draw participants back to the whole group, and have them re-establish contact in video, by delicately ringing a Tibetan cymbal. As with our F2F courses, we tend to set 18 as the maximum number of students or staff attending online workshops and retreats. More than that and it is unrealistic to keep track of all participants and engage with them all individually.
Figure 2. Ways of working are shared in slides at the start of the first session. Writing in Education 35
Changing the courses to online revealed unexpected benefits. By engaging with students over a more extended period of time, we got to know them better and we could weave out-of-session tasks around the online sessions. Information and activities could be emailed ahead – flipping – so that session time could focus on groupwork and discussion rather than informationgiving and individual work. Preparation and expectation We swiftly realised that if we were going to make an online course as richly interactive as a face-to-face one, we would need to set expectations. When working in a physical teaching space such as a standard teaching room it is, of course, rather easier to track people’s reactions and check the extent to which they are engaging. How could we encourage engagement during online sessions? We do so by making clear our expectations well before the course begins, reminding participants again when the course starts (Figure 2), and we seek to make the sessions activity-rich, enjoyable, relevant and practical, and foster a mutually supportive environment. By way of example, several days before a course runs I email the course’s Zoom weblink to participants, along with the timetable for the first session and the activities we will be doing on that day. I may ask participants to do some pre-course preparation, such as reflecting on their writing practice or completing a short writing activity e.g. pick an object and write down how its qualities relate to writing a doctoral thesis. We then pick up on the precourse activity during the first session, usually in small groups in breakout rooms. In the pre-course email I may include a link to a precourse online questionnaire encouraging participants to share with me (anonymously if they wish) their concerns and expectations. This will help me tweak the course design. I usually share the anonymised findings with the group soon after the start of the first session (Figure 3), establishing to what extent we can meet their requests.
Figure 3. A collation of participants’ responses to part of a pre-course questionnaire. This course for doctoral students and research staff was about writing high quality papers.
In that pre-course email I make clear that the expectation is that they will join using a device with a sufficiently 36 Writing in Education
large screen (a desktop, laptop or, at a pinch, a tablet). A smartphone screen is too small given that we are engaging in text-rich activities. The atmosphere I seek to engender on my courses (online or F2F) is a friendly, highly interactive and strongly supportive one. Participants are encouraged to ask questions, share experience and knowledge verbally, and also on the chat thread. Everyone is asked to share at some stage, whether with the whole group or in smaller groups or pairs in breakout rooms. The high level of interaction achieved is borne out by post-course feedback, which often includes comments about the participant being surprised that this was attainable online. For example: Please keep the mix of slides, polls, breakout rooms, chat, individual activities – this worked. And another: I really enjoyed the sessions. I thought the Zoom platform wouldn’t work well for this kind of training but it really did. In using this approach, I have worked with postgraduates and staff in eight universities, doctoral training entities and research centres, and in none of these has agreeing to such engagement been a problem. It is possible that a few would-be participants are put off because they realise they have to engage more fully in the sessions – they cannot lurk, or drop in and out (Bozkurt et al, 2020). Dealing with the implications of those expectations does require some sensitivity and flexibility. There will sometimes be one or two participants with mitigating circumstances, such as having to pick up a child from school, which means they miss part of a session. A participant may have very good reasons for not wanting to share their video and this needs to be respected. On my courses, all or most participants share audio and video and fully attend all parts of the course. Normally, not being able to share audio prevents the would-be participant from attending as they would not be able to engage in the group activities. Group interaction is a vital part of these online courses, as it would be if students or staff were attending a course face-to-face. Online platforms In September 2020 in an online survey we asked CFs which platforms they had used to run online sessions. The responses were: Zoom (17); Microsoft Teams (8); Blackboard Collaborate (3); and GoToMeeting (1). Since then, CFs have almost uniformly adopted Zoom as the preferred platform. Our experience has been that Zoom is stable and easy-to-use, and in our work with universities, we negotiate for using Zoom. Microsoft (MS) Teams is more feature-rich, and in many universities we find it is the institution’s preference because of its connectivity to other MS software and for administrative recordkeeping. However, when running online workshops we have found the user experience (as facilitator and as participant) is less favourable compared to using Zoom. For us, the biggest drawback with Zoom is its limited functionality for polling (quizzes) and for displaying results. This issue can be circumvented by using polling platforms such as Poll Everywhere (https:// www.polleverywhere.com). In the rest of this article, the platform being discussed is Zoom unless stated otherwise.
Online presence and interactivity It was important to CFs that participants attending online sessions had a clear outline, so they could have the appropriate materials to hand (either onscreen or printed), such as the session outline and activities, and any writing extracts. Should anything happen to a participant’s internet connection, or they arrive slightly late, they could then join the session with awareness of where they were in the proceedings. As a facilitator working online, our visual appearance is as important as it would be working face-to-face, perhaps more so. We tend to dress smart-casual. Our image needs to take up a reasonable proportion of the onscreen window, and be well lit, without any distracting background. When running an online workshop, I work facing a window, with a sidelight to create some contouring (Figure 4). Taking advice from RLF colleagues Karin Altenberg and Kerry Young, we aim to have a nondescript or cheerful background, seeking to avoid triggering controversy or concern amongst participants.
Figure 4. We consider our onscreen image as facilitator to be important – professional, friendly and non-threatening.
The main forms of interaction during online sessions are through discussion in the whole group (verbal or text in chat), discussion and activities in breakout rooms (with or without reporting back to the whole group), individual writing activities, and the use of polling (with results compiled anonymously and shared). Slides – usually in MS Powerpoint – are used sparingly as a visual stimulus, for summarising information and for reminders of instructions for activities. I often type ‘live’ onto slides the findings of a whole group discussion, or the report backs from breakout rooms, so the slides become another source of evidence, capturing what has happened on the course, which is shared with participants. Groupwork challenges As CFs, we have found the biggest challenges with going online are with orchestrating group work and checking that each group activity is working well. As in the faceto-face situation, you can choose the blend of people in each group: for example, by discipline or experience. But in F2F courses it is much easier to monitor each group,
interjecting with a light touch should an activity or discussion be in danger of stalling. This is trickier online. Either you trust the process and allow the group in a breakout room to complete the activity, or you dip in and out to check on progress. A very light touch is needed so as not to disturb the dynamics within the breakout room, showing that you are seeking to be supportive rather than simply eavesdropping. For longer courses working with a co-facilitator can be invaluable. Between you, you can check on different groups and spend extended time with each if need be. For participants having a co-facilitator can mean a welcome change in the ebb and flow of a course, as with F2F sessions. When working online with the whole group, your co-facilitator can check the chat file as well as observe and report back on the extent of engagement of all participants. Practising being a participant From April 2020, CFs started meeting in groups online to test the functions of Zoom and rehearse aspects of their workshops-in-development; this activity quickly became invaluable. It became apparent that what the facilitator observes and what a participant sees on Zoom may be rather different (Figure 5). During these ‘dry runs’, the facilitator can become a co-host and see what happens when someone else becomes the host. The facilitator may ask for feedback from colleagues such as: How easy is it to read the text on the slide? Or, have I given you sufficient instruction ahead of you working in the breakout room? We soon discovered the idiosyncrasies of Zoom. For example, anyone joining the session late cannot see the chat or uploaded files that have been shared before they arrived. If need be, and with agreement from others, they can be sent the saved chat file afterwards, which contains the entire chat exchange for the session (but not with the uploaded files in situ). Online writing retreats Among the toughest challenges for learning developers is transposing the benefits of face-to-face writing retreats to the online equivalent. There is plentiful evidence of the benefits of writing retreats (Kornhaber et al, 2016; Tremblay-Wragg et al, 2021). These include the development of camaraderie within a writing community, accountable goal setting, building confidence and reducing stress, benefiting from giving and receiving peer feedback, an emphasis on writing process, and paying deep and extended attention to creating, reviewing and editing a piece of writing. The way CFs first conceived writing retreats was strongly influenced by the Arvon model (https://www. arvon.org/) – 4 to 5 days spent in beautiful surroundings working with two or more well-published writers. Many CFs have been participants in, as well as facilitators of, such retreats. CF pioneers Tina Pepler and Babs Horton adapted the Arvon-style approach to working oncampus in ‘immersives’: combining workshop activities and writing sessions with one-to-one tutorials with facilitators. Such immersives were usually organised Writing in Education 37
Figure 5. As the screenshot of the facilitator’s computer screen shows (see left), what a participant sees onscreen is not exactly the same (see right). This is a good reason to practise being in both roles.
with a one-day or two-day workshop at the start and a one-day or two-day workshop a week later, and seeing students in between for one-to-one tutorials with one of the facilitators. Responding to the financial and time constraints of university clients, on-campus immersives or off-campus retreats provided by CFs have often evolved to two-day events, as is a popular format (Murray and Newton, 2009). In 2020, CFs Katie Grant and Anne Wilson working with arts, humanities and social science doctoral training partnerships adapted their F2F writing retreats to working online. With two facilitators and up to 16 students, how could their face-to-face writing retreats be adapted to the online environment? As with their F2F retreats, the online experience is a blend of workshop activities, timed writing sessions, and one-to-one tutorials with the facilitators. The retreats (whether online or F2F) are scaffolded across the three years of the research council funded PhD. In year 1 the focus of the two-day retreat is on demystifying academic writing at postgraduate level and ‘managing uncertainty’ (especially relevant in this pandemic year). Day 1 is a blend of workshop activities and timed writing sessions in response to prompts. Students are encouraged to give peer feedback even at this early stage. On Day 2, there are workshop activities, but the balance of the day is shifted towards timed writing sessions (the students can write offline if they prefer) plus one-to-one tutorials of 30 minutes each. In year 2, the format is similar, but to ensure that students make progress over the retreat’s two days, in a pre-retreat email participants are asked to identify a particular section of text on which to focus, and which they will be happy to show to one or two peers. The student’s text could be anything from a transition report (transition from MPhil to PhD) to a troublesome section of the thesis or the draft of a chapter – a substantial enough text for two days’ concerted attention. Focussing on these texts, students develop their writing skills, such as enhancing voice, structure, critical analysis and editing for sense and style, skills which, once the retreat is over, they should be able to apply with confidence to the rest of their thesis. 38 Writing in Education
Year 3 students are offered a staggered three-day retreat, the first two days launching a month of writing productivity. Again, students are asked to choose workin-progress text on which to focus on Days 1 and 2. Again, they will the share text with one or two peers. Peer feedback notwithstanding, on the Year 3 retreat the balance shifts from workshop activities towards timed writing sessions. Thirty-minute one-to-one tutorials focus on an individual’s writing challenges but include setting goals for writing productivity and skill development in the run up to Day 3, which takes place a month later. On this day, participants share their successes and challenges, and one-to-one tutorials help untangle writing problems. The overall focus is on ongoing mutual support. For example, on chat, participants share ‘words of encouragement and wisdom’. Anne and Katie will have seen some students across all three years and so will have tracked their development. That final day is a rite of passage for the students and a poignant farewell for the facilitators. In Katie Grant’s view, ‘The Year 1 and Year 2 retreats work as effectively online as they do face-to-face. Flexibility is key, so that we can respond to issues as and when they arise. We have learnt to be as flexible online as we are F2F. The Year 3 retreat would benefit from being at least partially face-to-face. Those “edge” conversations between students, over lunch or refreshments, can forge relationships which are hugely supportive as students navigate the final stages of their thesis.’ Online writing groups The value of writing groups, where a group of practitioners meet regularly to set writing goals, report on progress and offer mutual support, including peer review, is well established for academic writing (Aitchison and Guerin, 2014; de Caux et al, 2017). The heightened loneliness and isolation of doctoral researchers due to lockdown restrictions prompted some doctoral training centres to consider ways of nurturing students’ emotional resilience. Anne Wilson and Katie Grant responded by organising online writing groups, working with up to 16 doctoral students. Their facilitatorsupported writing groups run for 6 weeks, with members
meeting online once a week on the same day and at the same times in the morning and afternoon. As with their writing retreats, the meetings are structured but flexible. Unlike their writing retreats, a writing group is led by one facilitator. Typically, a writing group day starts with members checking in with their writing goals for the day. This is often followed by prompted rounds of freewriting. Fifteen-minute, one-to-one tutorials are on offer. If students highlight a particular writing problem, for example always writing defensively or trouble with paraphrasing, a mini-workshop might be created in response. After the morning’s activities, the writing group logs off and then reconvenes for half an hour in the late afternoon, reporting on how their writing day has gone. Group members share their successes and challenges, with supportive feedback from the facilitator and other group members. The aim of a writing group is to provide structured mutual support for group members up to the point at which it can become self-sustaining. The group may fragment within weeks, but even then students often form splinter groups or buddy pairs which continue long after the initial intervention. According to Katie Grant, ‘Six weeks is about right for having the group led by an outside facilitator. After about four weeks, group members express the hope that the group will continue. At six weeks, somebody nearly always volunteers to coordinate that continuation.’ She adds, ‘One of the real strengths of an online writing group – or an online writing retreat for that matter – is that it takes place in the environment where the student habitually works. It becomes a space of shared productivity rather than isolated angst.’ One-to-one tutorials Many CFs incorporate one-to-one tutorials within their longer interventions. They also offer tutorials to individuals to follow up on issues revealed in shorter
courses. The most common model is to have the tutee identify their concerns and email a text sample to the facilitator. The facilitator reviews it in the light of concerns and marks up the document. The document, with tracked changes or similar, is returned to the tutee, and they then meet online to discuss what has emerged. The ensuing exchange is often wide-ranging and deep. To best assist the tutee requires an exploration of their writing processes (Nicol, 2020), not simply focusing on the end product. For many CFs, using screenshare is equivalent to sitting side by side with the tutee in a F2F situation, studying the document together. Many CFs have rapidly adapted to this ‘new norm’. Opening up access Catering for the needs of those with diverse learning preferences and distinctive cultural backgrounds is a challenge, whether F2F or online (Wingate, 2015). Our experience as CFs over the last 18 months is that a wider diversity of participants currently engage in online workshops than previously attended equivalent F2F courses. This is confirmed by our clients, who report higher take up rates for writing-related courses, and it appears to be more than a temporary phenomenon. Several factors seem to be encouraging online take up. It usually requires less physical effort and planning to attend an online workshop. It can be perceived as a ‘safer psychological space’ than meeting in person in a room on campus. For many postgraduate students who are parttime and have work and family commitments, online workshops can be accommodated more flexibly and are less time-consuming to attend since travel is not usually involved. On several occasions I have run a workshop, when one of the participants has a baby or toddler bouncing on their knee (usually remarkably well behaved and bemused by the experience). Sometimes a participant is stroking a pet cat or dog, but not in the sinister manner of a Bond villain. This reveals another benefit of going online. Under the current circumstances, it offers a window into our students’ world. We see students in their home or university setting. With students scattered across the world, my online workshops that start at 10:00 am (UK time) are sometimes attended by those Writing in Education 39
from North, Central or South America, where it is very early in the morning, along with attendees from China, where it is late afternoon or early evening. Experiencing this community – meeting in real time but on different continents and in different time zones – is a rather wonderful dimension of the online experience, albeit created in response to an international calamity. Who is disadvantaged by going online? That is hard to judge, since systematic gathering of reasons for non-attendance is not happening routinely in many universities since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the kinds of learning activities that CFs offer, ‘lurkers’ are not encouraged to attend, even accepting that a more passive learning preference might be a legitimate and successful approach for some people (Bozkurt et al, 2020). The most disadvantaged seem to be those with access to limited technology (computer or tablet) and/ or have a poor internet connection. In my experience, it is remarkable that in online workshop sessions with participants from several countries the one or two with poor internet access (perhaps switching video off to reduce bandwidth usage) are often those in the UK. Which is better: online or face-to-face? This depends. Let us consider the three main players: the participants, the university client and the workshop facilitator. Consultant Fellows usually gather post-course feedback from participants using a standardised online questionnaire. This requests measures for course satisfaction, relevance, suitability of content, effectiveness of activities and appropriateness of the knowledge and skills of the facilitator. These are scored on a five-point Likert scale against the course’s intended learning outcomes. In addition, four open-response questions ask about benefit, proposed action to be taken, any suggestions for improvement, plus a final catch-all question about anything else. The scores and positive comments have not shifted significantly for F2F courses pre-COVID and equivalent online courses post-COVID. For those who attend CF online courses the experience is different compared to a F2F equivalent, but not recognisably less beneficial. Expectations might temporarily be lower, given the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic and associated lockdowns. However, for many participants – pandemic or no pandemic – attending courses online is easier. For the university client, assuming a more normal situation than at present, there are substantial benefits in having CFs run activities online rather than in rooms on-campus. Allowing CFs to organise sessions online reduces administrative workload for university staff and cuts costs. Online sessions do not require booking teaching rooms on-campus, providing paper handouts, offering refreshments, and paying CFs for travel and possibly accommodation. When I recently asked my eight university clients what they wished me to do next academic year, all but one wanted me to keep all or the majority of my courses online, subject to negotiation in each case. Only one client, a research institution, wished 40 Writing in Education
me to reinstate the courses as F2F as soon as possible – a decision, it must be said, not determined by feedback from students. As for the CFs who facilitate online sessions, views are very mixed. A small minority much prefer the F2F experience and want to return to face-to-face sessions as soon as possible and would even consider no longer running the course if the client insisted on it being online. A slightly larger minority find the ease and effectiveness of running courses online, without having to engage in extensive travel, makes the online option very inviting. The majority of CFs lie somewhere in between, perfectly prepared to run the course online or F2F, perhaps a blend of the two, with each option judged on its own merits for a given course. For many participants, mutual encouragement is greater in the F2F workshop or retreat than online, although online writing groups are one solution for engendering sustained mutual support. And for the facilitator, managing group dynamics, checking on progress of tasks and shifting between different modes of interaction – pairs, small groups and whole group – is more nuanced and can be achieved more elegantly working F2F. F2F is a more physical experience, but even online some CFs get participants to work creatively on large sheets of card or paper, and then screenshare what they have created. It is down to the ingenuity of the facilitator, giving clear instructions, to encourage ‘hands on’ tasks when working online. In conclusion The online ‘experiment’ has been remarkably successful; much more successful than we could have envisaged when CFs began to meet online in April 2020 to consider how to shift F2F courses online. By returning to the basics of course design, taking into account the nature of the online medium, meeting online as a community to share our experience and expertise and to test out our online solutions, we rapidly devised successful online courses. We have gone beyond ‘emergency provision’, and our online courses are well-designed and sustainable. Our clients confirm this as does the feedback we receive from participants. The busiest CFs have become even busier in the last 18 months. The academic year, 2021–22, will be another period of steep transition but in another direction. Having shifted courses online many HEIs will be moving substantially towards blended learning – combining online and F2F. This will be a challenge for universities given timetabling constraints and the design and availability of their physical teaching spaces. If students have face-to-face sessions for part of their day where will they go on campus for their synchronous (live), online sessions? Ideally, blended courses will combine the strengths of both kinds of provision – online and F2F. The experiment continues.
References Aitchison, C. and C. Guerin (2014). Writing Groups for Doctoral Education and Beyond. London, UK: Routledge. Biggs, J. and C. Tang (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University. 4th ed. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
Blum, S.D. (2020). ‘Why we’re exhausted by Zoom’, Inside Higher Education blog article, 22 April 2020. https://www. insidehighered.com/advice/2020/04/22/professor-exploreswhy-zoom-classes-deplete-her-energy-opinion
Bozkurt, A., Koutropoulos, A., Singh, L. and S. Honeychurch (2020). ‘On Lurking: Multiple perspectives on lurking within an educational community’, The Internet and Higher Education, 44, 100709. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2019.100709
Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E. and K. Eccleston (2004). Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning: A Systematic and Critical Review. London, UK: Learning and Skills Development Agency.
Day, T. (2018). Success in Academic Writing. 2nd ed. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Day, T. and U. Canton (2021). ‘I’m a writer and … Reconciling identities: working in the space between writing and teaching’, Writing in Education, 83, 31–37. Day, T. and D. Swinburne (2017). ‘Getting someone in: The role of blended professionals in HE writing development’, Educational Developments, 18(3), 20–24.
de Caux, B., Lam, C., Lau R., Huang, C. and L. Pretorius (2017). ‘Reflection for learning in doctoral training: writing groups, academic writing proficiency and reflective practice’, Reflective Practice, 18(4), 463–473.
Nicol, D. (2020). ‘The power of internal feedback: exploiting comparison processes’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2020.1823314
Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D. and R. Bjork (2009). ‘Learning styles concepts and evidence’, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 106–19.
Ramachandran, V. (2021). ‘Stanford researchers identify four causes for “Zoom fatigue” and their simple fixes’, Stanford News, 23 February 2021, https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/23/ four-causes-zoom-fatigue-solutions/ Sklar, J. (2020). ‘“Zoom fatigue” is taxing the brain. Here’s why that happens.’ National Geographic blog article, 24 April 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/ coronavirus-zoom-fatigue-is-taxing-the-brain-here-is-why-thathappens Tremblay-Wragg, E., Chartier, S., Labonté-Lemoyne, E., Déri, C. and M-E. Gadbois (2021). ‘Writing more, better, together: how writing retreats support graduate students through their journey’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45(1), 95–106.
Wenger. E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wingate, U. (2015). Academic Literacy and Student Diversity: The case for inclusive practice. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Acknowledgements: The members of the RLF Consultant Fellows’ community, and in particular Katie Grant, Chris Simms and Anne Wilson. RLF project consultants and managers Karin Altenberg, Kona Macphee and Kerry Young, and the RLF’s Digital Director, David Swinburne.
Kornhaber R., Cross, M., Betihavas, V. and H. Bridgman (2016). ‘The benefits and challenges of academic writing retreats: an integrative review’, Higher Education Research and Development, 35(6), 1210–1227.
Murray R. and M. Newton (2009). ‘Writing retreat as structured intervention: margin or mainstream?’, Higher Education Research & Development, 28, 541–553.
Dr Trevor Day, originally a marine scientist and science writer, is now a social scientist, writing developer and an academic author and nature writer. In his spare time he is inclined to dive into a river or the sea given the slightest opportunity. His latest books are Success in Academic Writing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd ed) and Sardine (Reaktion Books), a multidisciplinary appraisal of this modest but important fish. He thrives on helping others unleash the power and precision of their writing, especially doctoral students and early- to mid-career researchers. Trevor has just retired as Director of the UK’s Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellows’ programme (2013–21) and remains a writing consultant for several universities, doctoral training entities and research centres in the UK and overseas. Writing in Education 41
Letting it all spill out Gráinne Daly, Francis Gilbert and Peggy Riley THE BENEFITS OF VENTING FOR CREATIVE WRITING TEACHERS AND STUDENTS The need to provide solutions to pandemic deterritorialized teaching took effect almost overnight in early spring 2020. There was an immediate amplification of digital literacy requirements. The need for multimodal fluency and connectivity intensified throughout the pandemic and its effects were felt nowhere near as profoundly as in education. Overnight new learning systems had to be designed and implemented. New technology needed to rapidly be acquired and shared. Teachers had to redesign teaching curricula so that content would be fit for the new modes of delivery that was emerging. Students and teachers were inundated with ‘new’ as innovation became a key force underpinning the production and consumption of pedagogy. The challenges were many, and how we approached the challenges became vital to our survival and success within a period of monumental distress. This research looks at three models that were used to assist teachers in managing expectations during the pandemic.
Prologue by Peggy Riley Can you hear me? The race to move online during lockdown was overwhelming. With one eye on the news and the other on the timetable, nobody knew what to do or when to do it. Can you see me? There were systems in place, but no one knew how to use the software – or if they did, no one had the practical knowledge to know how – or even if – it would really work. Are you there? Is this thing on? Now, we probably all take online learning in our stride. It has become second nature, but that doesn’t mean 42 Writing in Education
it’s not still strange. I mean, we have students in our kitchens now. Students in our bedrooms. I dream screens – and I bet that you do too. Can you understand me? Is this even making sense?
Introduction by Gráinne Daly A precursor to this paper was presented by Dr. Francis Gilbert, Senior Lecturer in Education at Goldsmith’s University, at the National Association for Writers in Education Conference (NAWE) in March 2021.[1] Gilbert’s work raised awareness of the potential for modelling as a framework for reflection by stakeholders in virtual learning environments. A research team consisting of Dr. Francis Gilbert, Peggy Riley of Canterbury Christ Church University, and Gráinne Daly of University College Dublin was established to carry out a case study that sought to appraise three frameworks for reflection against their experience of teaching creative writing through the pandemic. Those models (with very brief elucidations which are explained later on) are: • Venting (expressing emotions about online learning) • Circumplexing (mapping emotions in terms of positive/negative, & high and low energy states) • The Learning Pit (diagramming/drawing problems and how to solve them) Since March 2020, we have been wedded to online teaching for better, for worse. The challenge to switch overnight from analogue teaching landed on our desks with no warning. Amid varying degrees of digital literacy, we were tasked with designing models of multimodal teaching and with switching our existing
courses to automated versions. Institutions doled out access to platforms such as Zoom and prescriptions for all for digital crash-courses. Learning how to teach in a new language: that of a Zoom/Brightspace/Google Meets (or other) combination, was exciting and daunting. Multimodality and pedagogy were pushed together with unprecedented speed and may have changed the face of teaching and learning forever. Uncertainty underpinned how students and teachers felt throughout the period. “Certain uncertainty is an oxymoron at the heart of reflective practice… The only way to get anywhere in reflection and reflexivity is to do it, trusting the journey.” (Bolton and Delderfield: 232) The Venting, Circumplexing and Learning Pit models were employed to empower users to chart their way through this ‘certain uncertainty’. The case study sets out the ways in which these innovative creative models for reflection were used. For this article, each researcher has commented upon the aforementioned three key foci. ,Gilbert, F. ‘Research Informed Approaches to Teaching Online’, 13.05.2021 (Conference presentation) https:// www.nawe.co.uk/DB/conference-2021-3/researchinformed-ways-of-teaching-creative-writing-online. htmlVenting
exercise students enjoyed. They graffitied the screen with their frustrations and in turn, I populated them into a word cloud for the class to use as an inspirational graphic in writing their ‘venting’ poetry. We vented in some form every week in a safe and supported environment and this fostered compassion, empathy, trust and self-respect within each group. It was a very valuable tool over the past three semesters of virtual teaching.
[1]
Let’s Vent! by Gráinne Daly Venting is a form of action research in which “practitioners study their own social situation to improve the quality of action within it.” (Bolton and Delderfield 2018: 67) In managing my frustration at some of the factors that were affecting my teaching practice, I adapted a process of charting my frustrations in a notebook at the end of each class. After a couple of weeks, I could see patterns emerge: I was growing impatient with a lack of engagement by some students; I felt the ‘wifi connection is bad’ excuse was wearing thin when it came to not having class reading or homework done; I was not happy with persistent lags on the line when some students were asked for their input. This lag was down to a combination of a delay in mute being turned off or poor connection or a reluctance to participate in live discussions on Zoom. In short, I hadn’t managed to account for the fact that some students did not like the digital platform and that they too were extremely stressed. I decided to schedule five minutes at the start of every class for a communal ‘vent’. It was our ‘talk time’, where I invited good news, publishing news or just an update of how everyone had been through the week and what challenges they had met. This worked. I met the students on a level at which they were willing to engage: we all felt under pressure and sharing our story can help. From then on, we continued to write together using supported group processes with a strong emphasis on reflective learning. Additionally, I developed a poetry exercise to facilitate this venting model and invited my undergraduate classes to embody the characters of their frustrations and let it inspire them to write their own poems as expressions of where they were at in their writing processes. This threw up some interesting creative work and was a positive use of the vented energy as a tool of self-reflection with regard to their creative writing. We initially vented collaboratively on Zoom Whiteboard which was a ludic
Figure 1 Example of Gráinne Daly’s venting
Francis Gilbert’s venting During lockdown, I vented every day in a handwritten diary. I used a notebook which has a QR codes on every page which means I can easily scan my pages into PDFs, and keep them stored online. This act of handwriting and drawing in an entirely private way was (and still is) liberating for me; I know I won’t show the diary to anyone else. This privacy made me feel free to say what I want to myself. I can look at the diary easily on my phone, track back and see what I was thinking and feeling months ago. This has proved useful, not only as a record of what’s happened to me, but to understand how I’ve learnt and grown as a person – or not! Before handwriting and scanning a diary, I used to type a diary on my computer. For me though, handwriting is more therapeutic: I see more clearly and quickly what is going on in my life. I feel often better after handwriting compared to writing on a computer screen. Furthermore, I perceive, re-reading my material, that I am more creative and interesting in my handwritten diary versus my digital one. Comparing the two diaries (the handwritten vs the computer one) I notice that my handwritten diary is more incisive, less full of extraneous detail, and much more enjoyable to re-read. Above all, handwriting gives me the chance to vent; I can express my emotions through the size of my words, through my drawings, through the different qualities of my handwriting, printing or joining up letters when appropriate. I find that I can confess the more embarrassing stuff using handwriting; it can be done through things like concept maps (see Figure 1), where every mark and absence of a mark is significant. What Writing in Education 43
do I unconsciously circle and why in Figure 1? What do I put in a box and why in Figure 1? These are important metacognitive questions to ask of myself, to prompt me to think more deeply about my writing processes.
As our world and university open up again, I’m going to remember to vent when I ask my students to. As they say – better out than in.
Venting is about being reflective – looking back at events – and reflexive – understanding your place in the world (Bolton & Delderfield 2018: 9). Once you confess to feeling a certain way, you gain a sense of perspective, particularly if it is written down; you capture a feeling and can begin to see its causes. Venting in a private diary affords a safe space to own and accept your emotions. This is what I have found, and this is why I have found it helpful while teaching creative writing during lockdown. I have shared my enthusiasm for it with my students (mainly postgraduate trainee teachers and creative writers), and many of them have reported to me that it’s been the one thing that’s really helped them through difficult times.
Figure 3 Peggy Riley’s venting
Moving on from venting: the circumplex Francis Gilbert’s Circumplex
Figure 2 Francis Gilbert’s venting
Peggy Riley’s Venting VENT: Venting feels good. I often use simple prompts to get students writing or let them vent with a fast, five-minute first line or question that might help ground them, anchor their thoughts and feelings enough to be able to think – and hopefully learn. More often than not, I use the five minutes while they’re writing to do admin: marking attendance on the Excel register or finishing yet another set of PowerPoint slides. The opportunity for me to vent feels great – even if my handwriting is indecipherable to any but me - and maybe that’s for the best. After all, these vents are personal and private. We might share “that” we vent, while not sharing “what” we vent about. 44 Writing in Education
For me, a second next step which follows on from venting – ‘splurging all one’s emotions’ – is to put my feelings into a circumplex. In a circumplex (Tseng et al. 2019), people’s moods are plotted against four axes. Vertically, their energy levels are quantified in terms of low and high arousal, horizontally, their feelings are measured in terms of positive and negative feelings. You will best gain an idea about how it works by looking at the example below:
Figure 4 Screengrab from academic article (Tseng et al. 2014)
In Figure 5, you can see how I devised my own circumplex about online learning and living during lockdown.
they can with what they have, whether that’s digital access or headspace. Do I remember to tell myself?
Figure 6 Peggy Riley’s circumplex
Circumplex? By Gráinne Daly
Figure 5 Francis Gilbert’s circumplex
A key thing that the circumplex (Figure 5) shows me is that my emotions were constantly changing throughout the day throughout lockdown. You can see here how important exercise and playfulness was to keep me upbeat: running, singing, upbeat music and cycling. You can also perceive that much of my day involved what could be called ‘productive discomfort’: not exactly pleasure or deep anxiety, but that nagging feeling that I should get on with things. For example, before writing this article I felt it, but when I got down to writing, I felt the writing ‘flow’, and enjoyed it. Peggy Riley’s thoughts on circumplexes The circumplex of affect is a nifty tool for labelling emotions. Like saying Rumpelstiltskin, we can better understand something if we know its name and call it out. At any moment, we’re cycling through a range of feelings, from the hopeful joy of a good session to the distress when the turnout is poor or the engagement low, as well as the low level hum of anxiety for all the things we can’t control. Sometimes it’s us – the concepts are too difficult or the workload has been too heavy – but sometimes it’s simply where we are in the semester – or the pandemic – that’s to blame. Being able to pinpoint my own shifting emotions through a session or a module reminds me that I’m only human and doing my best. I often tell the students that I know they’re doing the best
Although venting helped a great deal in achieving greater student engagement, there were regular occasions when I craved analogue teaching and the person-to-person contact it involves. I found that using the Circumplex model (Figure 7) helped manage and process feelings during waves of uncertainty. Teaching on Zoom feels performative: we are appearing on a screen, our homes are on show, we are trying to engage with tiles on a screen and expect a human response. It is not normal by any standards and yet we appraise our performance by the only standards we know: those of the classroom. Are we being understood? Do people look interested? Do they look like they are enjoying the material? A whole swathe of questions run in my mind as I look at my Macbook and pretend it’s a classroom. Are those with their screens off even there at all? Does poor attendance by some mean they don’t like the classes, or the format, or both? Again, it points to a sense of being ‘on display’, ‘on stage’, performing. This reel of questions is not as active, if active at all, in a bricks and mortar classroom where there is real and immediate human contact. I found circumplexing to be an enlightening activity through which to manage my pandemic-pedagogy stress. It is a process that calls for brutal honesty, and very often a point or two emerges on the paper that gives insight into a possible path to progress. It illuminated a number of areas for me that I had not been consciously aware of but were fundamental to a positive shift in my management of my teaching and learning process.
Writing in Education 45
Gráinne Daly’s Learning Pit
Figure 7 Gráinne Daly’s circumplex
The Learning Pit Peggy Riley on the Learning Pit The Learning Pit hit home for me due to its familiar shape. In most modules, I seem to be drawing the narrative arc on some device or surface. The Learning Pit takes the shape of “the man in a hole” story, beloved by Kurt Vonnegut (2012). Narrative arcs remind us that everything is changing - all the time - and that we are our own protagonists. The shape reminds me that however low I seem to be sinking in my own digital learning, at some point something will shift, and I will be able to climb my way back out. No one knows how things will change or what we’ll keep as regular practice from these strange times, but I’m going to remember how it feels to consider how I learn about my teaching and know that the more in touch I am with my emotions and my process, the more I can help students to be too.
Figure 8 Peggy Riley’s learning pit
46 Writing in Education
When Dr. Francis Gilbert discussed the concept of The Learning Pit at the National Association for Writers in Education Conference (NAWE) in March 2021, I recognized its enormous value as a tool both for students and teachers. It can be employed as a model for working through learning challenges in a mindful way. Interestingly, my ‘Learning Pit’ diagram (Figure 9), underlined for me something that had been bugging me for some time that I hadn’t yet managed to recognize as the key issue it actually was. It relates to the laborious task of having to work across several types of institutional software in order to deliver a teaching module. This is ugly and heavy for students, and is worse for teachers who have to design modules on Brightspace, communicate with students via email or voice notes, operate classes on Zoom and upload class admin details and grades to the university’s proprietary software system–Infosys. There are too many systems at play and much duplication of information. If some of these could be divorced and a blend of digital and analogue offered in the future, it would benefit all involved. I overcame the burden of this hyper-tech overload by streamlining my practice to using Zoom for teaching, email for contact with students and voice notes via email for feedback on student work. I relegated Brightspace to being an archive for class notes and for the end of term assignment submission. The voice note approach worked as it gave a somewhat ‘personal’ style of feedback to students who commented favourably on the approach. In particular, they were happy to see, from the length of the voice notes, that there had been significant time given over to the reading of their work. With each voice note lasting about twenty minutes, their feedback was that they were happy with so much attention being paid to their work. Whether we get back into classrooms soon or if the future bodes blended-learning, the innovations I will be bringing forward are the Venting, Circumplex and Learning Pit models. They have been invaluable resources in my teaching practice. They have encouraged empathy when used in classes and have been motivational in enabling people make progress in their own learning pathways. In managing multimodality in a creative writing programme, Barnard states that “creative flexibility is key” (Barnard, 2019:1). She rightly asserts that “it is simply not possible to stay permanently up to date with all relevant technological developments, there will always be something new.” (ibid: 29) And there will be further change and further iterations to how we approach teaching and learning. However, the three creative models for reflection that I used have enabled me to rethink my practice and realign it for effect in the systems in which I find myself operating.
Key Findings These three interconnected strategies of venting, circumplexing and devising learning pits are useful tools for both teachers and students. They are: Therapy For teachers, it’s important they vent or devise circumplexes or draw learning pits on a private basis, and then consider what is best to share, some material may not be appropriate. The first rule though is for teachers to say to themselves that their venting, circumplexes and learning pits are private in the first instance; this will make the process more therapeutic because it will provide a safe space for expression. Figure 9 Gráinne Daly’s Learning Pit
Francis Gilbert and the Learning Pit Once I have found that I have understood the different quality of my emotions, I often draw a learning pit to reflect upon what I am learning and where my difficulties are. Figure 10 represents the typical trajectory of me writing an article; I start by thinking I know about a subject and then feel overwhelmed, and then managed to climb out of my problems by taking a step-by-step approach. Drawing this learning pit really made me understand just how important a step-by-step approach is; I always learn something different when I devise a learning pit, but this point particularly struck me this time.
Building empathy Nevertheless, it is important for students to see some of their teacher’s struggles at times. This is not to create sympathy or pity but genuine, authentic understanding. For example, a teacher can make a class understand them better and aid their learning if they vent at appropriate moments, such as sharing their frustration about never seeing anyone on camera. This could build empathy within a class, and offer an opportunity for disclosing important but difficult issues in a low-stakes way. Metacognition and self-regulation These strategies are particularly useful with reference to creative writing, they can help teachers and students develop awareness of their writing processes. These strategies aid metacognition; the ability to think about your thinking and learning processes (Busch & Watson 2019).This is in turn helps writers to ‘self-regulate’; to set their own time-specific goals (Busch & Watson 2019). Serious playfulness These strategies are seriously playful (Bolton and Delderfield 2018: 30); there is something intrinsically ‘ludic’ about them. They help their creators and readers play the game of life better. The play here is very serious – some of the most painful and important things in life are brought to the fore – but the act of devising them is nearly always fun.
Figure 10 Francis Gilbert’s learning pit Writing in Education 47
References Barnard, J, (2019) The Multimodal Writer: Creative Writing Across Genres and Media, London: Red Grove Press
Bolton, G., & Delderfield, R. (2018). Reflective practice : Writing and professional development (Fifth ed.). London: Sage. Busch, B., & Watson, C. (2019). The science of learning: 77 studies that every teacher needs to know. London: Routledge.
Gilbert, F. ‘Research Informed Approaches to Teaching Online’, 13.05.2021 (Conference presentation) https://www.nawe. co.uk/DB/conference-2021-3/research-informed-ways-ofteaching-creative-writing-online.html
Tseng, A., Bansal, R., Liu, J., Gerber, A.J., Goh, S., Posner, J., Colibazzi, T., Algermissen, M., Chiang, I., Russell, J.A. & Peterson, B.S. 2014, “Using the Circumplex Model of Affect to Study Valence and Arousal Ratings of Emotional Faces by Children and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders”, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 44, no. 6, pp. 1332-1346. Vonnegut, K. (2012) Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories and Why Uncertainty is the Great Creative Gift of Life, URL accessed 28th June 2021:
Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories and Why Uncertainty Is the Great Creative Gift of Life – Brain Pickings
Gráinne Daly is an Irish Research Council funded PhD candidate in University College Dublin. She teaches Creative Writing at UCD and is a volunteer learning assistant in the Museum of Literature Ireland. A multi-genre writer, Gráinne’s work has been published in numerous publications. She is the 2019 winner of the UCD Maeve Binchy Travel Award. Sport in creative literature is her primary research interest and her doctoral research includes an examination of sport and remembrance culture in Irish literature.
Dr Francis Gilbert is a Lecturer in Education at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is Head of the MA in Creative Writing and Education and course leader for PGCE English. He has taught creative writing for many years and has published novels, memoirs, social polemics and educational guides. He worked for a quarter of a century in various English state schools teaching English, Drama and Media Studies to 11-18-year olds before taking up his post at Goldsmiths. He has appeared many times on radio and TV talking about schools and universities, including Newsnight, the Today Programme, Woman’s Hour and Channel 4 News. His most recent publications include the audiobooks of his novel Who Do You Love (Blue Door Press 2020) and educational commentary Analysis and Study Guide: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (FGI Publishing 2014). www.francisgilbert.co.uk Peggy Riley is a writer, playwright, and Senior Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing (BA) and the Creative Writing MA at Canterbury Christ Church University. She has run writing workshops for the past twenty years in schools, libraries, festivals and prisons as well as for social prescribing, linking community and wellbeing. She has written for numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal and Elle, and her short fiction has been shortlisted for prizes including Bridport and the Costa Short Story Award. Her first novel is Amity & Sorrow. She is a Yaddo fellow and recipient of a Grant for the Arts from Arts Council England. Originally from Los Angeles, she has a BA in Theatre from California State University and is currently studying for a Creative Writing MFA at Birkbeck, University of London. www.peggyriley.com
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Negotiating Creativity Dan Anthony CREATIVE WRITING AND THE MARKET Management and entrepreneurial specialists value creativity, but there is little consensus as to why or how. At the heart of the issue is our innate creativeness. The fruit of creativity - culture - enables us to distinguish between those who are ahead of the curve and those who are behind it. Indeed, indices of creativity (the numbers of patents, trade marks and designs registered) are presumed to reveal high degrees of intellectual productivity. In fact, although we associate newness with creativity, careful analysis of approaches to creativity suggest that it may also be concerned with reflexive behaviours that respect traditions, value the past and don’t recognise the new. From songlines to the portfolios of songs acquired by Merck Mercuriadis, there exist parallel approaches to creativity and, at a time when our understanding of value is being challenged, creative writers should explore them. We’re familiar with creativity’s connection with exceptions, opposites and antithesis. Keats’ famous identification of negative capability ‘when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’ underpins Philip Gross’ attestation to the value of ‘not knowing’, positioned prominently on the NAWE website (Hebron, 2014) (Gross, 2006). Our creative role models did not fit in. They were gifted individualists and their mythology has been developing since (at least) the Romantic period. When he identified ‘negative capability’, Keats also described how Coleridge would use the ‘Penetralium of mystery’ as a kind of antidote to over thinking. Creativity, to those who are afflicted with it, is almost a condition which must be managed and its most
significant ‘cases’ are part of popular culture. Van Gogh was so disliked by has neighbours in Arles that they asked him to sign a document promising never to return. Richard Wagner could be said to have taken Keats’ neologism literally and built himself a Penetralium in the form of an opera house at Bayreuth. In Figueres, Salvador Dali’s birthplace in North East Spain, Dali’s kooky museum transforms an old theatre into a monument not just to Dali and his life and work, but also to the idea of creativity (and Penetraliums) as ‘things’. Here, in Catalonia, creativity itself is presented as a life force, a stasis-defying stream of changes and inventions brought into being by the individual genius – the artist – The Dali. Indeed, the mythologization of creativity, so that its meaning is both central to our economic development and is associated with a self-appointed coterie of trend setters, who, having come across a man with a Penetralium, decide that they might like one too, reveals self-seeding mavericks, seers, ‘Men of Genius’ (as Keats described them in 1817) and is an inherent problem associated with our conception of creativity (Hebron, 2014). The mythology of creativity seems to have been brought into being by our inventiveness, or by our realisation that inventiveness itself can be framed as an attribute and, ultimately, as a commodity. The management of creativity is a paradoxical idea, yet we’re all familiar with it. As writers we construct our working lives around our carefully curated creative processes. Those of us who have day jobs will have observed bureaucratised creative processes and compared the two experiences. Both processes may seem surprisingly similar. To some extent they deliberately miss the point. Creativity may be inherently surprising, different, destructive and unpredictable, yet society, Writing in Education 49
markets, bureaucracy, organisations and our everyday lives cannot exist without order, predictability and routine. Organisational creativity is an oxymoron. It describes a perennial negotiation in which the terms of creative control are continually reappraised. In this way creativity has always been managed and attitudes towards it have not remained static. In today’s hyperindividualised world, creativity may be linked to ‘positive’ attributes such as individuality, autonomy, choice and change. It is expressed digitally through billions of individual web pages. On the other hand, all of those creative individuals online adopt patterns of behaviour and these ‘bee roads’, revealed by clickchecking algorithms, generate the data that distils value for companies who want to capitalise on creativity as a commodity. Conversely, then, even in the digital realm, creativity can be viewed as an expression of collective societies, teams, groupthink, phalanxes, companies, traditions, shared values and beliefs - not necessarily individuality. We know that society and organisations are not objective in their assessment of creativity and that intellectual trends as well as economic and political demands steer creativity and (when they don’t like it) repress it. Creativity can be politically motivated through the creation of ‘goals’ – to ‘feed the world’, to ‘save the planet’ or to ‘drain the swamp’, ‘stop the count’ or, as Orwell or Minitrue put it, to understand that ‘war is peace’ or even, as he didn’t put it, to ‘take back control’. Here, and that means ‘here’, not, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Putin’s Russia, Narendra Modi’s India or Xi Jinping’s China, controlling creativity is a political struggle, enmeshed in a dialectic between slogans and their antitheses. One way to begin to explore the way creatives negotiate creativity is to consider their output in context, so as to reveal the nature of the negotiated process and how it is capable of existing, productively, in synergy with quite divergent influences.
The value of invisibility and the creation of authenticity
Mind Force (1961), Leo Brett was one of Lionel Fanthorpe’s many pseudonyms 50 Writing in Education
Lionel Fanthorpe is reputedly the most prolific science fiction writer of his generation, writing at least 163 novels and countless short stories during the 1950s and ‘60s. Using a variety of pseudonyms, he produced pulp fiction for a mass audience. Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Lionel Fanthorpe Science Fiction Archive preserves and researches Fanthorpe’s work. This archive and Fanthorpe’s collaboration with the university enable us to explore a unique creative process blending market conditions (a demand for pulp fiction), entrepreneurial endeavour (the creation of a mechanism to satisfy that demand by publishers John Spencer and Co.) and a writing process (Lionel Fanthorpe’s phenomenal output between 1953 and 1967), in short, Fanthorpe’s negotiated creativity. Fanthorpe’s creative process was managed by a publisher called John Spencer and Co. who, since the late 1940s, produced a long-standing series of science fiction stories under the brand Badger Books. Fanthorpe himself only visited their offices in Brackenbury Road, Hammersmith occasionally. Publisher and writer communicated by post. John Spencer and Co. provided images, Fanthorpe replied with storylines (literally single lines). The publisher picked the one they liked best and Fanthorpe dictated his 40,000 word manuscript. His stories were accepted without editorial intervention and they were published quickly in wood-pulp paperbacks which included advertisements and occasional problems with the typesetting. They retailed in the early 1960s at two shillings and six pence. For each book, Fanthorpe was paid at a rate of 10 shillings per thousand words (Holland, 1986). Authors like Fanthorpe, who could produce interesting work at high volumes, were encouraged. John Glasby, who wrote science fiction, Westerns and hospital dramas also created many works for John Spencer and Co.. In all, the company published around 835 titles during a twenty-year period, and Fanthorpe wrote around 160 of them (Agnew, 2020). Over a hundred of these titles were published under Fanthorpe’s or Spencer and Co.’s ‘house’ pseudonyms: Rene Rolant, John E Muller, Bron Fane, Peter O’Flynn, Karl Siegried, Deutro Spartacus and others. Thus, although the branding of Fanthorpe’s fiction points to authorship of a human kind - ‘John Spencer’ sounds like a the sort of man who might own a company, indeed he might have relations in the world of retail, and the coterie of author names adopted by Fanthorpe might suggest a vibrant community of creative minds - far fewer people were associated with John Spencer and Co. than their branding suggested. Between them, Fanthorpe and Glasby accounted for almost a quarter of their output and John Spencer and Co. actually equated to just two entrepreneurial publishers: Samuel Assael and Maurice Nahum. Looked at this way, John Spencer and Co., the publishers of Rolant, Muller, Fane, O’Flynn, Siegfried and Spartacus, was myth. All the names were made up. This oozing of fiction from the publisher as brand to the writer and the writer as brand back to the publisher is inherent to the business. Daniel Foe (or Defoe as he began to call himself) is reputed to have used over 198 pseudonyms and, although the context was different,
(Defoe sought anonymity for practical and political reasons, as well as financial ones) the intersection between fiction as text and fiction as artifact-in-bookform-produced-by-manufacturer was similar. A Badger Book, produced by John Spencer and Co., written by W. H. Fear, was a thoroughly fictional object which could be displayed and/or read. The real ‘geniuses’ who created a production process that generated total fantasy, Assael and Nahum, were out of sight. What distinguishes the writer who has a Penetralium from those that have a ‘De’ in front of their name? Why are some writers happy to occupy many false identities and others only willing to be ‘themselves’? There are a number of answers to these questions, several orbiting the binary supernovas of class and literature. Superficially, literature, as produced by creative geniuses must be attributable – it needs provenance. Pulp fiction, whether you’re a Defoe or Fanthorpe simply has to be sold and the author’s name is a trade mark in the branding process. In fact, the border between these two ‘classes’ of literature is so porous it might be regarded as ‘fictional’. Lionel Fanthorpe and John Spencer and Co.’s approach to creativity was a practical matter. In the process of filling books for sale, Fanthorpe created his own fictional universe. Through the process of anonymisation/ fantasisation, Fanthorpe seized the chance to develop a creative process that produced millions of published words. There was a negotiation and a deal, one that held for two decades. In his negotiation of creativity, Fanthorpe achieved freedom to write the stories he wanted to. All he had to do was work fast and make sure his text had something to do with a picture. Many writers today would give their eye teeth for such unmediated creative freedom and a direct relationship with readers.
Deals with the devil In spite of the fact that the success of John Spencer and Co. shows that literary production processes have the potential to create economic value, for as long as we’ve been engaged in literary production, creativity has been recognised by writers as an unruly force. Thus, although Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of ‘creative destruction’ is regarded as apposite to the churning inventiveness our times, his idea that creativity may be symptomatic of a fundamental instability in capitalist societies is more in tune with the visions of creativity offered by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Goethe, Orwell and Atwood than those of the Department of Culture Media and Sport (Schumpeter, 2010). Creativity is dangerous and writers experience its jeopardy in two ways: 1 - through their quests to take work to market, sell it and make a living (the average annual salary of a British writer is £16,096 and falling) (ALCS, 2018); and 2 - through what they feel then say about creativity. Shakespeare’s witches’ famous recipe exposes the problem. If fine dining gets out of control it becomes a dark art. Here’s a particularly unpleasant excerpt: Third Witch Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe (30) Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron. All Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Second Witch Cool it with a baboon’s blood, Then the charm is firm and good (Macbeth, 4.1.22-38). Now that the incantation is complete, the sheer terror creativity encompasses can be explored. The alarm was sounded thousands of years ago. This is how the writing team who developed the King James version of the book of Genesis described how God took action to prevent overreaching, over imaginative humans from communicating at the tower of Babel:
Pencil drawing from Lionel Fanthorpe’s notebook. Fanthorpe’s work ‘described’ the artwork he received by post (Cardiff Met. Fanthorpe Archive).
And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech (Genesis 11: 6-7).
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The need for the new In The Tempest, which, like the King James’s Bible, was made public in 1611, Shakespeare explores his creative craft using an island to embody a central motif: ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep’ (The Tempest, 4.1.156-158). It’s difficult not to see the play as a kind of a summation of Shakespeare’s view of creativity. Here creativity is about negotiation. In this story, the drama is animated by Prospero’s desire: if he doesn’t get his dukedom back then all hell might break loose. The contrary nature of creativity, its association with ancient myth and modern thought, was also explored by Mary Shelley. She didn’t leave anything to chance, pinning the paradox of this apparently ‘new’ idea into the title of her book: Dr Frankenstein; or the modern Prometheus. The title taps into a founding myth of Western civilisation prior to 1818 (the date of publication) and the new mythology of our subsequent industrial and post-industrial societies. The key word in Shelley’s title is ‘modern’ and her story’s journey from literary thought experiment - to vessel for popular culture - to the work of a gifted individual (perhaps even a ‘genius’) is both emblematic and, like her novel, intriguingly unclear. ‘Frankenstein is bottomless. It’s, if you’ll excuse the term, an open book. Firstly, it’s impossible to be sure what really happens in the text; events are only partially revealed, and all of these half-told happenings are presented indirectly,’ writes Lucy Sweeney Byrne in the Irish Times (Byrne, 2020). Shelley’s trajectory and that of her monster don’t just tell us about our attitudes to creativity, they show them. Mary Shelley’s transformation in the public eye from Percy Shelley’s curator into a visionary novelist demonstrates an inherent problem with our capacity to recognise geniuses. They are, as Shakespeare knew, politically and culturally contingent. During the nineteenth century a woman married to a man like Percy Bysshe Shelley could only be a pedestal for his statuesque genius. Perhaps, today, he can only be a distraction from hers. Shelley’s Dr Frankenstein defies categorisation. It has been described as post-modern, gothic, and post-human. She has been called ‘the founding mother of science fiction’ but the titular term ‘modern’ does not generally link the work to twentieth century ‘modernist’ writers (Yaszek, 2018, p.175.). This is perhaps because in Shelley’s work, text and story are closely related, text itself is not a ‘a thing’. Shelley’s story is about the ‘new’, but it doesn’t embody it. It identifies newness as our preoccupation and it explores it through a globetrotting, death defying narrative. Although the story has gothic credentials it explores an implicit problem associated with the ‘new’ – how do you make it? If you’re going to have a world that is forever ‘new’, then you need people who are forever ‘creative’. Dr Frankenstein’s negotiation with creativity represented, to use a modern term, a steep learning curve.
52 Writing in Education
For Mary Shelley the journey from marketplace to literary canon was a long one. ‘When Shelley’s Frankenstein was first published, it was difficult to foresee its bright future in the literary canon: the novel was perceived and tagged as a minor horror story. The book’s reception as well as its inception was closely associated with the tradition of horror and ghost stories’ (Fishelov, 2016, p.4). Indeed, its strong presence in the market as an almost instant part of popular culture may even have mitigated against its value, because, as far as literary cannons are concerned, markets are tasteless. Lawrence Rainey introduces his Institutions of Modernism with reference to another nineteenth century writer who knew how to sell a story. He quotes Dickens addressing an audience in Birmingham in 1857 in almost Johnsonian terms; ‘The People have set literature free’ (Rainey, 1998, p1). Modernist writers of the twentieth century turned their backs on populist storytelling exemplified by Dickens in favour a more abstract literary mode. Woolf, Joyce and Proust, each with their own stylistic tropes, transformed reading fiction into what Jimi Hendrix described as an ‘experience’. Modernist writing was about newness, but not in Mary Shelley’s ‘guess what?’ sense. It was semantically and structurally challenging, it was created by authors who wanted to burn off the crust of brown Victorian varnish that seemed to coat all surfaces, creating art that represented the ‘new’, interpreting and defining the ‘new’ technological, globalised interplay of identity and culture and raising the possibility of ‘new’ hitherto unfelt sensations – those of modernity. Rainey’s suggestion is that any implication that twentieth century modernist writers produced art purely for its own sake, and not for markets, isn’t true. Since markets and a growing sense of individualism were part of the twentieth century ‘modern’ world, relationships with markets were bound up within modernist texts and creative processes. Rainey examines the way that Joyce’s’ Ulysses was published by Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare and Company, a Parisian English-language bookstore; It [the first edition of Ulysses] signified the decisive entry of modernism into the public sphere via an identifiable process of commodification, via its transformation into a product whose value could now by assayed within the framework of several overlapping institution, … My point is not to urge a revisionary account that impugns the morals or motivation of Beach or Joyce – though I suspect these were more complex than might be gleaned from our received narratives – but to situate their decisions and actions within the context of a body of institutions, a corpus of collecting, marketing, and discursive practices that constitute a composite social space. (1998, p. 44) The complex relationship between modernists and markets reveals a variety of techniques, many predicated on the development of what we might call ‘an elite brand’. Rainey’s identification of the first edition of Ulysses as an attempt to transform book into artwork has
precedents. The early editions of Virginia Woolf’s work at her own publisher, Hogarth Press, are characterised by small print runs and iconic images, many created by her sister, Vanessa Bell. According to Rainey, modernist writers ‘were eager to demonstrate that their work could be successful now and to construe market success as a justification for their aesthetic and cultural claims’ (1998, p.72). With the benefit of hindsight, Fishelov writes: ‘In order to better understand the complex process by which a literary work escapes oblivion and acquires canonical status we should pay close attention not only to the “usual suspects” (e.g., the pronouncements of literary critics) but also, and rather, to the artistic dialogues and cultural echoes initiated by certain literary works’ (Fishelov, 2016, p.8). Looking forwards into the chaos of the ‘new’, practicing writers have fewer navigational aids. Rainey’s suggestion, that modernist writers created their relationships with markets through the establishment of networks, patronage, institutional support and elite branding demonstrates the fluidity of writers’ relationship with markets. This relationship should be regarded as part of a creative writer’s process – an aspect of negotiating creativity. Perhaps one place that might reveal the genuinely public-spirited artist-writer, who creates their work not for personal gain, but for artistic justification might have been the Soviet Union. After all, in this society all individual expression was to some extent ‘collective’. Of course, we’re familiar with the problems associated with having Stalin as an ultimate commissioning editor and one book whose journey into the literary canon explores this phenomenon is Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s, One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn, 1962). This remarkable description of a day’s work during internment in a gulag because of Stalin’s suppression, infected with disease, with temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius, with nothing to eat, describes Denisovich’s perverse satisfaction at building a straight wall under such trying circumstances. The story is often quoted as an example of strength in the face of adversity, of tenacity, of brilliant writing in the face of oppression. Just as Shakespeare, Shelley, Joyce and Fanthorpe explored our relationship with creativity, so did Solzhenitsyn. His interest was in creativity during deprivation, something he personally experienced. Here there was no public, no publisher, no market. Within the story there is only cold and abuse of power. The text was written in revolt against destruction. It describes the flimsiness and the indefatigability of the creative drive. It has the allure of a message in a bottle. When it was eventually published, it was a hit. When it was written it was the work of one author acting alone. Perhaps this is the authorial capacity we sometimes associate with ‘genius’. Perversely, Ivan Denisovich also reminds us that, although markets are important factors in our creative process, strictly speaking, writers do not need them to work. The text was eventually published with the approval of Stalin’s replacement as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev (Solzhenitsyn was exiled from Russia because his work
was suppressed again after Khrushchev). Our obsession with markets manifests the condition of our age, not necessarily the wisdom of our age. Solzhenitsyn’s creative negotiation was with patrons, not markets. His book was about that negotiation. His experience with a particularly powerful group of patrons: Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, reminds us that creative individuals’ ability to negotiate, or a patron’s interest in commission or suppression, transcend the circumstances of their time.
Negotiating Creativity Writers negotiate creativity. They do this in several interconnected ways. Firstly, their stories describe the trajectories characters take as they deal with the paradoxes of creativity. Every new work is a product of a Barthesian, creative negotiation between writer, text and reader. Secondly, they negotiate with their commissioners: agents, publishers, broadcasters, companies, patrons, social media influencers, tweets… Thirdly, they negotiate with their circumstances: political, social, economic and cultural. Thus, even ideas concerning the writers’ identity, individuality and the value of introspection must be seen as, in part, contingent on circumstance and negotiable. The consistent process common to all writers wherever and whenever they live is negotiation. At a time when the production of ‘newness’ has morphed from a literary preoccupation for modernists into an economic necessity for the creative industries, the need for creative specialists to explore negotiating creativity has never been greater. The question creative writers should engage with is not how to build Penatariums, or even how to escape from them, it is how to successfully address the timeless essence of our craft: how to negotiate creativity.
In The Planet Seekers (1964), Fanthorpe (writing under the pseudonym Erle Barton) reworked Shelley’s Frankenstein myth for the space age. Lionel Fanthorpe’s last Science Fiction book for Badger Books was called The Curse of the Khan (Fanthorpe, 1966). It begins with an exploration of a search for creativity most writers understand too well. Fanthorpe, who knew that this would be his last story for John Spencer and Co, put himself into the frame. He was the author in search of a story, negotiating creativity: Writing in Education 53
It was an ordinary sort of evening to begin with, I suppose, a mid-September Saturday; traffic was purring spasmodically past the study window – if I’d thought about it more I’d have had it at the back of the house overlooking the garden, but a lawn that’s a week overdue for a short back and sides depresses me. I looked up at the clockwork Frankenstein’s Monster on the marble mantelpiece. He moved a two-inch arm in commiseration and I remember thinking he looked about as inspired as I felt. My gaze roved from Franky to the plastic lion, the gorilla from the same stable, a cardboard box of miniature rock samples labelled “Souvenir of the Peak District,” a “fossilised” watering can and a small inaccurate globe. A photograph and two more plastic figures completed the ensemble – human being (transparent, with all the inside machinery gaily showing its glossy paint to the anachronistic world) and skeleton (luminous variety which makes me wonder if he’s radioactive, so I don’t sit too close to him!). Getting no inspiration from the mantelpiece collection I tried my other infallible method of working up a plot. The basic equation is, typewriter plus fingers over the square root of plot equals story, equals money. I started working up a mild sweat; the car needed a tyre, I wanted a suit, assorted merchandisers who rashly supplied me with their wares wanted payment. Last week’s post had bills outnumbering letters by five to one and letters outnumbering cheques by the same ratio. But still no plot... There was a ring at the front door bell (Fanthorpe, 1966, 1). Needless to say, the caller is Genghis Khan. The rest is history.
Works cited Agnew, S.P.D. (2020) John Spencer and Co, Illustrated Bibliography, Milton Keynes, Lightening Source ALCS (2018) UK Authors’ Earnings and Contracts 2018: A survey of 50,000 writers A survey of 50,000 writers www.create.ac.uk, University of Glasgow [Online]. [Accessed June 9 2021] Available from: http:// eprints.gla.ac.uk/187965/1/187965.pdf Byrne, L.S. (2020) Frankenstein: a postmodern novel written long before modernism, Irish Times [Online]. 26 September. [Accessed 24 May 2017.] Available from: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/ frankenstein-a-postmodern-novel-written-long-before-modernism1.4352486#:~:text=Frankenstein%3A%20A%20postmodern%20 novel%20written%20long%20before%20modernism,-It’s%20 impossible%20to Cross, D. (1995) Down The Badger Hole, Portland, Wriggly-Cross Books Fanthorpe, L. (1966) The Curse of the Kahn, London, Badger Books Fishelov, D. (2016) The Indirect Path to the Literary Canon Exemplified by Shelley’s Frankenstein. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Volume 18, Issue 2, Article 6 [Online]. [Accessed June 9 2021] Available from https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2847 Gross, P. (2006) A Walk in the Abstract Garden: How Creative Writing might speak for itself in universities, Professorial Inaugural Lecture, University of Glamorgan, 10 December [Online]. [Accessed June 9 2021] Available from: https://www.nawe.co.uk/DB/wip-editions/articles/a-walkin-the-abstract-garden-how-creative-writing-might-speak-for-itself-inuniversities.html Hebron, S. (2014) John Keats and ‘negative capability’ [Online]. [Accessed June 9, 2021] Available from https://www.bl.uk/romantics-andvictorians/articles/john-keats-and-negative-capability Holland, S. (1986) The Mushroom Jungle – A History of Post-war British Paperback Publishing, Westbury, Zeon Rainey, L. (1998) Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites and Popular Culture, Newhaven and London, Yale University Press Rollins, H.E. (1958) The Letters of John Keats, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press Schumpeter, J. (2010) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Routledge, Basingstoke Solzhenitsyn, A. (1962), One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, New York, Signet Classic Yaszek, L, (2018) Mary Shelley’s Legacy, Science Fiction Film and Television Volume 11, Issue 2, p.175 [Online]. [Accessed June 9 2021] Available from: https://www-liverpooluniversitypress-co-uk.ezproxy.uwe.ac.uk/ journals/article/20942 Van Gogh Museum, 750 Br. 1990: 754 | CL: 579 From: Vincent van Gogh To: Theo van Gogh [Online]. [Accessed July 29, 2021] Available from: http://www. vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let750/letter.html#translation
Dr Dan Anthony is a senior lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of the West of England. He began his career as a writer on radio. He’s written plays, situation comedies, short stories and documentaries for Radio 4, Radio 3 and Radio Wales. He’s a children’s and YA novelist and worked as a scriptwriter on CBBC’s Story of Tracy Beaker. His research into the field of creative writing focusses on the interface between the real and the imagined in the marketplace. He writes on the subject of innovation and intellectual property for the UK Intellectual Property Office, edits the annual UK IP Crime and Enforcement Report and blogs on the subject of innovation and creativity. 54 Writing in Education
The Vitality of the Author Elen Caldecott TO BE PHYSICALLY PRESENT IN A CREATIVE WRITING CLASSROOM In October 2021, when I return to campus, none of the undergraduates I’ll teach will have had sustained, inperson workshopping before. None of the three cohorts will have experienced pre-Covid university life. This sobering fact has made me reflect on what it means to be physically present in a space when we talk about our writing. How it feels to walk into a classroom, to choose a chair, to be part of a group, as we share our words with each other. My thinking has been guided by two new books and one old essay. In this article, I set out my response to these three texts and how they led me to conceptualize the vitality of the author. This will shape my teaching as I help this wonderful, traumatized, excited, frightened group of students get used to the old ways of doing things. Many of you will have read Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses and The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez. Both were published in 2021. They contain, in different ways, exhortations for teachers of Creative Writing to understand how a student’s lived experience will affect not just their writing, but also their response to traditional teaching methods – namely, the workshop. This is not a book review, so I am not going to evaluate these books at all – only to say that, if you have not read them, then pop them on your tbr pile forthwith. I will say that the traditional workshop model has received criticism in these pages (Mimpriss 2002, Tondeur 2014) and elsewhere in the past, and these books provide yet more reasons to reengage with that debate.
Traditionally with the workshop model, the writer shares a piece of work with their peers, and sits silent, as the piece is discussed or annotated. Of course, there is variation within that approach, with some tutors offering writers the chance to introduce the piece, or respond to the critique afterwards, but – for the most part – the writer doesn’t speak. The writer’s job is to listen while the other students ‘kick the tyres’ of the piece. Chavez and Salesses both warn us that we risk kicking the tyres of a piece without first understanding what type of vehicle it is. The writer’s silence can leave the workshop group with critical misunderstandings. Chavez expands on Liz Lerman’s ‘Critical Response Process’ while Salesses explores the idea that there are multiplicities of crafts and writing traditions underserved by the traditional workshop model. Both writers point out that the student’s lived experience will affect their work and traditional workshopping leaves little space for the student’s voice. I said, in my introduction, that I was going to discuss two new books and one old essay. The title of this piece might well have alerted you to which old essay. As I thought of us all, returning to campus in an embodied way, and having read Chavez and Salesses on the significance of the writer’s lived-experience, I was led to re-read Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author. I was curious to see whether this seminal essay of literary criticism might have something to offer on the enforced silence of the workshop model. Moreover, the essay is so short, and so engagingly written that a re-read was too tempting The Death of the Author sets out the idea that each piece of writing is an assemblage of reimagined quotations, a Writing in Education 55
collage made of all the texts that have gone before. The intentions of the author, the ‘genius’ of the ‘Author-God’ are of little significance, “there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author” (1977: 148, my emphasis) This mirrors the traditional workshop model, where the group serve as attentive ‘first-readers’ enunciating their understanding of the writing, while its author sits and listens. Barthes goes on to posit the idea that a text is produced not by an ‘author’ but by a ‘scriptor’ who is “born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate; there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now” (1977: 145). For Barthes, as with our traditional workshop model, the author’s context – their lived experience – matters little, because the text exists here and now, with the reader. Having written a lot of books by now, I smiled wryly at the idea that I enunciate a text. What a neat and tidy verb to describe the chaos of my early drafts. Did each of the drafts create a new scriptor, I wondered? Was I being trailed by a bevy of ghostly versions of myself, each given form every time I created a file with a new draft number? No. Each draft of a book is so closely connected to previous iterations; paragraphs and phrases are switched in-andout-and-in-again so often that any clear delineation between drafts is impossible. It just is not tidy. The death of the author is not a metaphor that expresses what it feels like, in my body, as I write (I cannot, and would not, comment on the usefulness of the metaphor for literary criticism, that is well above my pay grade!) Instead, it seems to me that the Creative Writing classroom is a place in which we should acknowledge the vitality of the author. The writer’s active presence is vital. Vital, in the sense that the work only exists because the writer makes it exist. Vital in the sense that the writer has lived and brings their history and cultural background into the classroom. Vital in the sense that the work is alive (or ‘a live’) document; it is an unfinished work-inprogress, subject to the author’s decision-making. In October the students will be, for maybe the first time,
people in a room, with active texts. My job will be to facilitate a community that can nurture both the writing and the writers. Chavez has this to say about the workshop community: they are, “collaborators... helping a fellow author to fulfill their artistic vision, the product of which may or may not be intended for them” (2021: 106). She goes on to say that this community is “centred on trust rather than transaction” (2021: 134). How much harder than usual it will be for students who have lived through a global pandemic to relax into communities of trust when they finally find themselves on campus. Many of them have never caught the eye of a classmate, shared a secret giggle, touched the arm of a peer in gratitude or to offer support. Many of them have had their cameras off as they’ve attended lessons, or have experienced those lessons asynchronously. Firstyears haven’t been able to lounge-about with secondyears, picking up tidbits of advice. Second-years haven’t witnessed the frenetic activity of final-year students and so gain an insight into their own future. In short, they have experienced only disembodied learning. So. My workshop space is going to look a little different next year, in order to facilitate this shift to physical closeness and the embodied author. Our welcome sessions will be playful. They will be physical. We’ll throw beanbags to remember each other’s names; we’ll scribble ideas and doodles and images on paper; we’ll tear magazines and glue them onto card; we’ll pass around real books, and the room will smell of newly bought stationery and dust motes. I will start with low-risk workshopping. In the early weeks of term, I’ll invite students to read pieces aloud – or have their friends read it – and the only comment they’ll get will be a round of applause. When we do look at written pieces, the writer will be asked to introduce it to the group as best they can, to present their moodboard, or notebook, or inspirations in the weeks leading up to their first critique. Before anyone gets their red pen out, we’ll discuss open questions, generative questions, productive questions and how to frame them. And, when the critique is given, the author will be allowed to interrupt the flow of the conversation, to ask questions of their own.
Dr Elen Caldecott is a writer for children and young people. Her most recent novel The Short Knife was written as part of her practice-led PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Published in 2020 by Andersen Press, The Short Knife went on to be longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and to win the 2021 Tir Na n-Og Award. She joined Lancaster University in 2020 as a Lecturer in Creative Writing.
56 Writing in Education
These students, more than any we have ever taught before, will need space and time to play, to dream, to become a community with a shared goal. And to do that everyone’s voice will be vital. Bibliography Barthes, Roland, trans. S, Heath, (1977), Image-Music-Text, Fontana, London Chavez, Felicia Rose (2021), The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, Haymarket Books, Chicago
Mimpriss, R., (2002), Rewriting the Individual: A Critical Study of the Creative Writing Workshop, Writing In Education, vol 26 (Summer 2002), available at https://www.nawe.co.uk/writingin-education/nawe-magazine/previous-issues.html, accessed 15.06.21 Salesses, Matthew (2021), Craft in the Real World, Catapult, New York Tondeur, L., (2014), Versions of Creative Writing Teaching, Writing in Education, vol 62 (Spring 2014), available at https:// www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/nawe-magazine/ previous-issues.html, accessed 15.06.21
Student Submissions
From Winter Edition 2021, Writing in Education will contain a section specifically for student submissions, which we hope will contain 1 or 2 articles.
Submissions Process: Via Submittable, a student can submit a brief proposal (150-200 words) for consideration. This will go out for peer review and submissions will be selected based on appropriateness for WiE and any theme for an upcoming issue. Length of contribution? 1000 - 2000 words Who can contribute? Contributions to Writing in Education are for members only, therefore contributors will need a link to NAWE. Students might be studying at an institute that has NAWE institutional membership, or are recommended by a NAWE member. How to submit? A separate Submittable option which is purely for student to submit their proposals (and separate to the standard option for the editions). If accepted, the student then emails their piece directly to the publications email address. Submit for an edition or an open submission process? Given these submissions might potentially need more editorial support (and longer turnaround time), the Editor will decide which edition an accepted submission will be published in.
Support in place:
• It is important that students submitting to Writing in Education receive support from either their tutor / lecturer / supervisor. • As a publications’ team, we can provide constructive feedback on why a proposal has not been accepted, however it is important that the student has further support available at their institution to fully understand the reasons why their submissioni might not get accepted. • Equally, a proposal might be accepted but the submitted article/paper might need significant editorial support - beyond the resources of NAWEs publication team. Therefore, having someone identified from the student’s institution to provide this support, is important. The standard submission guidelines for Writing in Education will apply (apart from length). These are available at: http://www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/nawemagazine/submission-guidelines.html
Interested in becoming a peer reviewer?
To support this initiative, we would like to have a number of peer reviewers to review the student submissions and provide feedback. If you would like more information, please contact Lisa Koning at publications@nawe.co.uk
New Professional Graduate Membership Category As a way of supporting creative writing graduates this year as they make their move from student to working as a professional writer in education and the community, we’ve introduced a new membership category called Professional Graduate. This includes public liability insurance cover (£10m) and all the other benefits of Professional Membership including public liability insurance cover (£10m) and costs just £37.50 (half the price of the usual Professional Member rate). For schools and other employers, NAWE membership provides an important mark of professional standing and we hope that this discount will help this year’s graduating students as they set out on their journeys as professional writers in what are undoubtedly challenging times. This offer is for people joining NAWE for the first time and for existing Student/Associate members who wish to upgrade their membership and is available until 31 October 2021. This special discounted rate applies to the first year of NAWE membership only. When renewing, the second year will be at the usual Professional Member rate. There’s more information at https://www. nawe.co.uk/membership/membership-benefits.html Please do help spread the word. Writing in Education 57
The Creative Interactions Project Clare Taylor and Heather Richardson SHARING TEACHING APPROACHES ACROSS ART HISTORY AND CREATIVE WRITING Introduction The Creative Interactions project was born of an informal discussion between two Open University (OU) colleagues – Clare Taylor, an Art Historian, and Heather Richardson, a Creative Writer – about the ways that engagement with visual art enhances the study experience of students in both these disciplines. Art History and Creative Writing share a common concern with how Arts & Humanities students interrogate the visual world. The purpose of this project was to discover how students learn from the ‘toolkit’ of each discipline, as well as to examine the benefits of inter-disciplinary learning. The objectives were to develop Creative Writing students’ awareness of the value of studying original artworks in order to develop their writing, and to introduce Art History students to using Creative Writing techniques as an additional method of analysing artworks.
Background to the project Founded in 1969 as the ‘University of the Air’ the OU has carved out a space as the leading provider of distance learning across the UK and further afield. Its main site is in the city of Milton Keynes, the last of the so-called new towns constructed in the UK. The campus was built on a former agricultural estate, whose principal house (Walton Hall) still survives and is used by the University as offices, as well as a library, Faculty buildings and other facilities added since the 1970s. In common with other Universities, since the OU was established the institution has built up a collection of artworks by British and international artists, many of which are on display at the Milton Keynes campus or in the nation offices in Belfast, 58 Writing in Education
Cardiff and Edinburgh. This collection was the focus of our project. As Charlotte Behr and Sonya Nevi have noted in relation to their project developing Humanities teaching using the campus at Roehampton, UK, ‘every University has its own history, environment, and resources that can be explored, all with an intrinsic interest to their students’ (Behr and Nevin 2019: 397). The OU’s art collection is in some ways typical of others in the UK, in other ways not. It contains portraits of Chancellors (Appendix, 1) and Vice-Chancellors; artworks donated by staff (and a few students) and works commissioned for specific sites. As well as focusing on modern British artists, such as Edward Bawden and Mary Fedden, on the advice of an Art Work Group in existence up until the early 2000s the OU collected paintings, prints and sculpture by First Australian, African and Nepalese artists at a time when the work of these groups was not well represented in the UK. The collection now presents an opportunity to explore issues around the role of the creative and visual arts in defining global, local and individual identities, questions that lie at the heart of contemporary concerns in teaching the Arts & Humanities. However, as the Open University is a distance learning Higher Education institution (HEI), most students never get the opportunity to visit and view this art as they study remotely, from home. The Creative Interactions project was therefore an opportunity to fulfil one of the QAA criteria in Art & Design - that students interact face to face with works of art in order to develop skills in analysis and visual literacy (QAA, 2019, pp.7, 11). From a Creative Writing perspective, the project drew on the
long tradition of ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by art works – see the ‘Further reading’ section at the end of this article for additional scholarly articles). Creative Writing tutors often use visual materials in activities as prompts for poems and stories. The QAA notes that Creative Writing students are developing skills as both maker and critic (QAA, 2019, p.3). The project was also influenced by the ideas explored in Third Mind: Creative Writing through Visual Art (2002), which go beyond ekphrasis to consider the dialogues that result from bringing the two disciplines together. Bringing together students from Art History and Creative Writing to work with the Open University Art Collection therefore offered an opportunity for both creative and critical synergies. The links between art collections and Creative Writing are not, of course, new. Writers use galleries as inspiration for their work, for example the Irish poet Paul Durcan’s collection Crazy Women (1991) was inspired by works in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, and Give You My Hand (1994) by paintings in the National Gallery, London. Artists also use writing as inspiration in their work, either directly in terms of subject matter or in the emotions they seek to provoke in the viewer. Words can also form the actual subject-matter of artworks. The Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, for example, combined the visual and written in works such as b_oats (Appendix, 2), which draws on traditional sayings. More recently, Cerith Wyn Evans has used the device of the palindrome in his light sculpture which invites the viewer or reader to walk through and around a circle of light (Appendix, 3). Project methodology Our primary method in this project was to bring together a group of Undergraduate students from the two disciplines for a one-day pilot workshop at the OU campus in Milton Keynes where they would have a series of ‘encounters’ with a range of artworks. Clare Taylor had already explored the OU’s resources on a small scale with students studying the MA in Art History, involving face to face engagement with sculptures, paintings and prints on campus, which suggested the potential the collection might offer in teaching. In order to give some context for our methodology it’s important to briefly explain the way teaching happens at the Open University, as this is different from many other HEIs. The teaching staff comprise central (i.e. Milton Keynes-based) and regional academics, and a sizable body of home-based Associate Lecturers. The central/ regional academics convene modules in their specialist subject area and write the teaching and assessment materials. The Associate Lecturers engage directly with the students through tutorials, marking and pastoral support, and base their teaching around these materials. We decided to focus our project on Level 2 students studying our 60 credit modules A226: Exploring Art and Visual Culture and A215: Creative Writing. These modules are compulsory for students studying the degree pathways in Art History & Visual Cultures and in English Literature & Creative Writing respectively. Working in collaboration with two experienced Associate
Lecturers (ALs) who teach Art History (Diana Newall) and Creative Writing (Helen Mosby) we planned an approach to the day. It was important to find a way of measuring the impact of the event on the students, so we devised a pair of questionnaires, one to be completed at the beginning of the day, and the other at the end. In the first questionnaire we were interested in finding out several things: what students’ expectations were of the day, and what they hoped to gain from attending; which aspects of their studies they found most challenging; and what prior experience, knowledge or interest students had of the ‘other’ discipline. In the second questionnaire we revisited these questions to assess what had changed for the students, as a result of the workshop, and how they felt this might feed into their studies in future. Six students (three from each discipline) attended the workshop, which took place days before the first UK lockdown in response to the COVID pandemic in March 2020. After the pre-workshop questionnaire was completed the workshop proper began, with the students divided into two groups according to specialism. Our main reason for keeping the students within their own disciplinary group at this stage was that from the student perspective the primary value of the workshop was to enhance learning on their module. Starting with the discipline with which students were most familiar also aided confidencebuilding in working with a new tutor and students. The first session involved the Art History students and Diana, the Art History AL, engaging with and analysing a series of art works, while the Creative Writing students focused on one painting, and were guided through discussion and writing activities by Helen, the Creative Writing AL. For the second session these activities were repeated, but this time with the Art History students moving across to Helen, and the Creative Writing students going to Diana. The Art History sessions ‘Great writers are great observers. They consider the world around them, notice overlooked details, and make connections. Looking carefully at art helps us to develop these observation skills. Art encourages us to slow down, look closely, and reflect on what we see.’ ‘Looking to Write, Writing to Learn’, Philadelphia Museum of Art The Art History sessions were designed to foster skills in close looking, using the technique of visual analysis– see the ‘Further reading’ section at the end of this article for additional scholarly materials on Art Historical methods. This method applies a series of formal questions to interrogate artworks, in order to arrive at a considered meaning rather than readings around the viewers’ initial responses and cultural influences which may determine the types of artworks and makers they respond to positively or negatively. It involves looking firstly at how artists have used formal devices in their artwork, including aspects such as scale, composition, pose, gesture and expression (where figures are present), the treatment of colour and light and viewpoint; secondly, at subject matter or the artwork’s content; and finally at function, or where and how an artwork was designed to be viewed. The Art History sessions focused on Writing in Education 59
artworks from across the globe. Students explored with Diana a group of works by First Australian artists, all paintings of either animals or vegetables on a material made from bark, the images depicted as if viewed from above (Appendix, 4). These were contrasted with a Zimbabwean sculpture, Viper Sniper, which made use of different textures and colours of stone, and a 1950s screen print by Edward Bawden of an English town, a scene whose muted colours and stark outlines recalled twilight on a winter’s day. These examples allowed students to see how artists used formal devices to present their subject matter in different ways, leading to lively discussion. As Behr and Nevin have noted, teaching ‘on location’ enables new learning opportunities in front of artworks since it allows students to ‘see, describe, interpret and discuss’ (Behr and Nevin 2019: 400). For the Art History students, this technique was familiar, although the artworks, especially those from different cultural contexts, were not, but for many of the Creative Writing students this was a new tool with which to look at visual material. The Creative Writing sessions For the Creative Writing sessions Helen focussed on a painting by the British artist David Tindle Mural Panel C (tempera on masonite board, 1978) (Appendix, 5).The mural is one of a set of three which were commissioned from the artist in 1978 to decorate a coffee lounge on the Milton Keynes campus. This large-scale painting shows a view of a lawn and trees seen through partially opened French windows. An old-fashioned rotary dial telephone has been taken outside and left off the hook. The fine net curtains hanging from the French windows lend a hazy quality to the view of the garden and open countryside beyond. The students were encouraged to begin by looking initially at the whole picture, and then paying close attention to the details, such as the phone. What might it mean that it’s been taken outside and left off the hook? There’s a mystery there, the beginnings of a plot. The piece has important lessons for student creative writers, in the way that it shows without explaining. The narrative is implied rather than spelled out. The students then considered how the image conveyed information about setting, era and season: the phone suggests that the scene is in the 1960s or 70s; the setting seems to be a house or other building in the country; the greenery on the trees must mean that it’s late spring or summer. Another important aspect of the painting was the point of view from which we were observing it, i.e. that of a person inside the room, looking out. After this detailed discussion of the painting the students were asked to choose a viewpoint character – perhaps the person in the room looking out, or whoever had left the phone off the hook – and write a focussed freewrite for five minutes. The group then read their work out to each other, with Helen identifying the various Creative Writing techniques that they’d used, sometimes unknowingly. The freewriting technique is, of course, very familiar to Creative Writing students, but less so to the Art History students, and several of them found it a helpful way to break the spell of the blank page. 60 Writing in Education
The plenary Once both groups had experienced the two approaches, they were brought together to study a triptych of artworks, The News comes to Town, Milton Keynes, 1983, by the Milton-Keynes based collective Boyd & Evans (Appendix, 6) These three drawings are all set in contemporary urban settings against a backdrop of similar three-storey pale brick housing. The first piece shows a burning car and fleeing figure, the second features a young woman carrying a small child, and the third has a man in the foreground and a crowd of people in the street behind him. The session began with a formal analysis of the work, followed by a discussion of the ways this might be ‘translated’ into Creative Writing. Some students began to speculate about the chronology shown across the three parts of the work, while other noticed the almost total absence of the natural world. The image of the woman and child sparked associations with recent refugee crises, and the general atmosphere of unease and disorder led some students to think of science fiction or dystopian narratives. The students were asked to choose a viewpoint and write in poetry or prose. As with the earlier sessions, the students then read out their work, and were encouraged to give peer feedback. Student learning and engagement In order to assess learning and engagement, the students completed two questionnaires in the course of the day. The first questionnaire was designed to assess the level of students’ prior experience and interest in the two disciplines in advance of the workshop and establish why they had decided to attend. Two thirds of the students across both disciplines had a small amount of previous experience in using visual art as inspiration for writing. However, the Creative Writing students appeared to have fewer specific expectations of what they would gain from the workshop than the Art History students. They hoped that Art History might give them inspiration for their studies, whereas the Art History students felt Creative Writing would help them in more quantifiable ways, such as improving their descriptive writing, or understanding the narrative or story in a painting. One participant who was a primary school teacher hoped she might gain some ideas for using Creative Writing with her pupils. Participants were also asked to identify the elements of their discipline they found most enjoyable and most challenging. Although the responses tended to be very discipline specific, there were some common themes, such as the challenge of fulfilling assessment criteria, and the difficulties of producing work that was both technically polished and expressive. The second questionnaire was completed at the end of the day, and captured the students’ reflections on the workshop, as well as their intentions to use the approaches of the other discipline in their studies going forward. This revealed learning had taken place across both disciplines, in particular through the use of a visual medium to inspire writing. One Creative Writing student said, ‘Looking at artwork from an art historian’s perspective would lead to different stimuli’,
while another said they had learnt ‘How to interpret art as a medium with a purpose’. The Art History students commented on the creative writing activities, with one saying, ‘Spontaneous creative writing is hard!’ while another acknowledged the benefits of writing without hesitation, stating emphatically, ‘I can write!’ , suggesting a deepened awareness of the importance of honing what you write in academia. Creative Writing students suggested that analysing the artworks in detail would help them with their descriptive writing, while the Art History students concluded that thinking of an artwork in terms of narrative would add a new dimension to their interpretation. Finally, the students were asked to rate the extent to which the workshop had helped them in their own discipline, and how likely they were to use the approaches of the ‘other’ discipline area in their ‘home’ subject in future. Both groups gave a high rating to the helpfulness of the workshops, with the Creative Writer students more likely to use Art History approaches in future than vice versa.
Pedagogical impacts In addition to student feedback, we asked the two AL facilitators to provide us with their own written reflections on the workshop, focusing particularly on aspects of pedagogy that they would incorporate in their teaching in future. The Creative Writing AL, Helen, noted that I’ve always contrasted writing and painting by assuming that one moves through time and the other doesn’t, so to learn […] about the way a painting creates its own chronology by drawing the eye successively from one image to another was a revelation. This is analogous to the way that skilful handling of viewpoint in say, fiction, can direct the reader’s attention or sympathy. Visual analogies work particularly well in creative writing and this will be particularly useful in A215 tutorials and feedback. The Art History AL, Diana, reflected that The [Creative Writing] approach involved much closer engagement with, for example, the possible story, mood, drama and presence in a work of art. Some of these connect to aspects of visual analysis and this could provide a different route into helping students carry out effective image analysis. She noted the ‘word-smithing’ skills of the Creative Writing students, commenting, The importance and skill of crafting effective words to communicate, whether for a fictional piece, publishing research or scholarship or delivering teaching was an area I had been aware of but the workshop really highlighted this. It suggested an area to work on for future writing projects. Both AL facilitators felt their understanding of their own subject had been enhanced, with some practical applications that they planned to take forward in their teaching.
The project has also had wider impacts on learning and teaching. The authors have gone on to present their findings to audiences of colleagues, both within their School and to ALs from Faculties across the University, demonstrating how the approaches developed and defined in the project can be used in teaching across disciplines from Computing to Social Care using artworks drawn both from the OU’s Art Collection and publicly accessible collections around the four nations of the UK. In addition, the project team gave a well-received panel presentation at the NAWE conference in March 2021. The project has also had lasting impacts on the production of distance learning courses. The authors have shared their findings with Classical Studies colleagues investigating assessment methods for a new Level 3 module, while Clare has also collaborated with a Creative Writing colleague in writing inter-disciplinary teaching materials for a new Level 1 Arts & Humanities module, Cultures, including artworks by Hamilton Finlay and Wyn Evans (Appendix, 2 & 3). Heather will shortly begin work on a new Level 3 Creative Writing module, and plans to incorporate some of the approaches developed during the project into the teaching materials.
Summary Disciplinary division is inevitable even within a School of Arts & Humanities, due both to the modular way in which subjects are taught at many HEIs, and the administrative necessity of organising staff by discipline or subject area. This project has given participants insight into each other’s discipline, leading to a greater appreciation and respect of the ‘other’ subject area, and deep reflection on the ‘home’ discipline. Amicable and productive professional relationships have been established. Particularly telling was the comment at the end of the workshop that looking at an artwork was the same as a piece of writing and the realisation that, as one student put it, ‘everything goes into it’.
Future plans Looking further ahead we plan to roll out an online version of the workshop which will be available to all students on the second level modules A215 and A226. This will enable us to collect a more substantial amount of data. We plan to work with our two AL facilitators to refine the activities engaged in during the pilot workshop. To reflect that the OU operates across the four nations of the UK, we will include artworks from the Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff offices. This is another distinct advantage of conducting the follow-up workshop online. In the longer term, subject to funding, we hope to develop open access teaching materials designed around the Creative Interactions concept.
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References
Appendix – links to images referenced
‘Looking to Write, Writing to Learn’, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Available from: https://philamuseum.org/ booklets/12_70_160_1.html [Accessed 09.04.2021]
1. June Mendoza (b.1924), The Right Honourable Betty
Boothroyd (b. 1929), Chancellor of the Open University 19942006, oil on canvas, 1994he Right Honourable Betty Boothroyd https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/theright-honourable-betty-boothroyd-b-1929chancellor-19942006-27212/search/locations:the-openuniversity/page/2
Behr, C. and Nevin, S. (2018) ‘The Roehampton Campus Project: Using campus, collections and memories of the university as a learning and teaching resource for Humanities students’, Journal of Arts & Humanities in Higher Education, 18 (4), 395-415 Durcan, P. (1991) Crazy Women, Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland
2.
Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006), b oats, 1998, printed ink on card, 11 × 15 cm. Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, Acc. No. ABDAG017158. © Aberdeen City Council (Art Gallery & Museums Collections). By courtesy of the Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay. https://emuseum.aberdeencity.gov.uk/objects/118847/boats
3.
Cerith Wyn Evans (b.1958), In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni (We Go Round and Round in the Night and are Consumed by Fire), 2006, neon lights, steel and glass, displayed: 30 × 30 cm, diameter 300 cm. Tate collection, T12314. Photo: © Tate. Seen displayed suspended from the ceiling in The Duveen Sculpture Galleries at Tate Britain https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wyn-evans-ingirum-imus-nocte-et-consumimur-igni-t12314
4.
Djambala Marawili (b. 1953) Burrut’tji, natural pigment on bark, 2005 https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/burruttji-27558/ search/locations:the-open-university/page/3/view_as/ grid
5.
David Tindle (b.1932) Mural Panel C, tempera on masonite board, 1978 https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/mural-27229
6.
Fionnuala Boyd (b.1944) and Les(ley) Evans (b.1945), The News comes to Town, Milton Keynes, 1983: Panels 1,2 & 3, crayon on paper, c.1985 (no image available on artsuk.org)
Durcan, P. (1994) Give You My Hand, London: MacMillan Foster, T. and Prevallet, K., (Eds) (2002) Third Mind: Creative Writing through Visual Art, New York: Teachers and Writers Collaborative QAA Subject Benchmark Statement: Art and Design, Fourth edition, The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2019 QAA Subject Benchmark Statement: Creative Writing, Second Edition, The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2019
Further reading D’Alleva, A. (2012) Methods & Theories of Art History, London: Lawrence King Gulla, Amanda N. (2018) ‘Ekphrastic Conversations: writing poems as dialogues with works of art’, Canadian review of art education, research and issues, 45(1), p. 23. Hatt, M. & Klonk, C. (2006) Art history: A critical introduction to its methods, Manchester: Manchester University Press Krauth, N. & Bowman, C. (2018) Ekphrasis and the writing process, New Writing, 15:1, 11-30. Mansoor, A. (2014) ‘Ekphrastic Practices in Catalysing Creative Writing in Undergraduate ESL Classrooms’, New writing (Clevedon, England), 11(2), pp. 208–227.
Clare Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Open University. She has contributed teaching materials to modules including A344, Art & Its Global Histories, and is currently the Art History convenor for A112, Cultures, a major new inter-disciplinary module in Arts & Humanities. Prior to moving into Higher Education, Clare was a Curator at galleries and museums around the UK and she is an Academic Consultant to the OU/BBC series ‘Secrets of the Museum’. She has a particular interest in teaching in the environment of the gallery and historic site, both online and in-person. Heather Richardson is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Open University. Her current research interest is multimodal writing, with a particular focus on combining narrative textiles, digital storytelling, visual art and flash fiction/non-fiction. Her novels are Magdeburg (Lagan Press, 2010) and Doubting Thomas (Vagabond Voices, 2017). She is currently Deputy Director of the Centre for the Scholarship of Teaching and Innovation in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science at the OU.
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Considering Prose Poetry Andrew Melrose OZ HARDWICK & ANNE CALDWELL TWO PROSE POETS Oz Hardwick and Anne Caldwell are in the final stages of compiling and editing a collection of chapters called Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice (Routledge). In their own words, it is a collection of 15 critical essays on the subject of prose poetry from an international group of writers and academics. It vigorously engages with the Why? and the How? of prose poetry, a form that is currently enjoying a surge in popularity. With essays by both practitioners and academics – far from exclusive characteristics amongst the volume’s contributors – the book seeks to address why this form is so well suited to the early 21st century, and to explore how its distinctive properties guide both writer and reader. Having been introduced to this poetic form and being a member of a prestigious prose poetry group which has members from all over the world, I have come to realise that prose poetry in the English language is blossoming well beyond being a minor movement, and prose poets are increasingly finding themselves become part of the poetic mainstream. Paul Hetherington and Cassandra Atherton have noted that prose poetry ‘comfortably’ straddles the worlds of prose and poetry and yet that straddling creates its own literary identity. Being neither one nor the other the fusion creates a form which only the words ‘prose poem’ can name. But pinning down exactly what a ‘prose poem’ is, and if there is there such a thing, how might it be defined and understood? As Hardwick and Caldwell say,
a condensed yet pliable space for creative work to be shared in both traditional media and digital platforms. This critical focus will be one of the major strengths of this collection of essays, making an invaluable contribution to the scholarship around the form. However, because the collection is presenting a largely practitioner perspective, the essays not only offer a snapshot of contemporary debates within the prose poetry field, but also actively contribute to the poetics and craft of the form. While it has been century and a half since the publication of Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen, the definition of the prose poem had stumbled and this will be a very twenty-first century book building on the popularity of the form itself. And it is a timely addition to a growing set of publications. The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem: from Baudelaire to Anne Carson (2018), edited by Jeremy Noel Tod sits alongside a proliferating list of critical studies. Titles such as Jane Monson’s British Prose Poetry: The Poems Without Lines, Peter Johnson’s A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry (2019), and Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington’s Prose Poetry: An Introduction (2020), along with a significantly increasing number of anthologies and collections. However, there will still be many out there who are curious about the ‘prose poem’ form itself. Happily, Oz and Anne agreed to provide examples and here they are:
Along with the emergence of digital literature and flash fiction, the playfulness and flexibility of prose poetry singles it out as a form of writing that deserves further scholarly attention. It provides Writing in Education 63
Amateur Dramatics in the Provinces Her heart is a toy theatre, a cat’s cradle, a skipping game played alone. Scenery slides in receding cardboard vistas of bushes, birds and distant towers, each hand-coloured, tight within the lines, as she locks her fingers in small rituals of patience and string. Protagonists are stiff as archetypes, adopting the gestures of garden statuary, but still awkward in their assigned roles. As her wrists flex, lattice shadows dissect customary plots she has cut from the family Bible and other myths, tricking discrete planes into hybridisation and metamorphosis, optical illusions of time and scale. If there were words, she would speak them now, but the elastic on her ankle is twisted, pulling her back, threatening to topple her into her childhood stage; and she knows that, the minute the painted branch breaks, the cradle will fall. Oz Hardwick From ‘The Lithium Codex’ Hedgehog Poetry Press 2019 True North Out on the boat’s bridge, Alice and her companion sit and watch the sunset, stare into that globe of light, half-swallowed by water as the sky blooms pink, then drains of colour. His white shirt glows. Alice knows his shoulders are sunburnt and tomorrow his skin will blister and peel. He radiates heat, smells of sweat, with his rolled-up sleeves and loosened tie to signal the end of the day. And without warning, without so much as a word between them, he leans towards her. She feels his forearm tighten across her breasts. Her back is pressed against him. Each pearlescent button imprints a circle on her spine. They sit still, clamped together in half-light, listening to the boat’s diesel engine, herring gulls shrieking and circling. They were lovers once and now hardly speak of this. But here at sea, he is her Polaris, her true North. Anne Caldwell From ‘Alice and the North’, Valley Press 2020
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REVIEWS Moore, M. and Meekings, S. (eds) The Place and the Writer: International Intersections of Teacher Lore and Creative Writing Pedagogy, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, ISBN 9781350127159, hardback, £85.00
In the English-speaking world, and indeed in institutions in English-speaking countries, the availability of creative writing courses is extensive. The Place and the Writer offers a global perspective on creative writing pedagogy, something that is still in its infancy in many countries. One of the book’s strengths is its focus on different viewpoints from myriad places—and the pairing of theory with practice makes this a valuable addition to a bookshelf belonging to anyone working in the field. Each section has a different approach, from local literature influences on creative writing in Greece, through to the issues of teaching creative writing through a threatened language—in this case, Icelandic. Not only are the plethora of approaches extremely thought-provoking but those connected to creative writing can learn from such variable practices. Without a doubt, this is a healthy and proactive way of developing skills. In ‘Workshopping to Better Writing and Understanding’, Fan Dai and Ling Li—of Sun Yat-sen University in China— discuss the relative nascency of creative writing courses there with comparisons made to Iowa, in the mid-twentieth century, where such courses have their origins. Dai and Linh comment that their practice is ‘holistic’—and students are taught through ‘reading as a writer… crafting from previous students’ work.’ Clearly, there are complexities with writing in one’s native language alongside a second language. ‘Cultural elements’ paly a large part here—and connected points are discussed in the second section, about language use in a South African creative writing seminar. Holly Thompson, in ‘Creative Portfolios’, explains the nature of EFL creative writing courses in Japan, and the links these have to the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs). Many of the sections explore interesting concepts in sufficient detail, with signposts and references to further research. Maria Taylor, of De Montfort University, writes about reflective writing, and offers suggestions about how this can be implemented throughout the academic year. Hanna Sieja-Skrzypulec explores ‘lore and pedagogy’ in Poland’s creative writing courses. In ‘Playing Catch-Up’, Bernardo Bueno explains the situation in Brazil, in particular ‘finding a voice’, in institutions where creative writing is still relatively new. The global approach throughout this book highlights how creative writing courses are not unique to the behemoths of American and British institutions. However, in ‘An American Walks into a Bar (with her British Creative Writing Students)’, University of Gloucestershire lecturer Lania Knight write about the differences between US and UK undergraduates, and how she approaches teaching (as an American). One of her main points is about encouraging group ownership—and Knight takes her students to a British pub in order to do this, something that she would not do in the US, which opens up interesting notions about cultural differences in developed countries—an issue much larger than restricting it solely to creative writing. The Place and the Writer is useful, practical and academic in its approach, as a guide for writers and those working in education, as well as those who want to learn about there is significant variation in approaches. Even though some sections, such as ‘Creative Portfolios’, include some examples of creative output, it would be helpful to have more evidence like this in other sections. However, as Jen Webb comments on the back cover, ‘… contributors… Writing in Education 65
richly evoke, engage and critique… in various contexts… extending and enriching understandings.’ This beautifully summarises what a superb resource this book is. Review by Matthew Tett. Matthew is a freelance educator and writer living and working in Wiltshire. He is Writing in Education’s reviews editor and he coordinates Corsham’s StoryTown festival.
Monica Suswin, Shifting Boundaries: Creative Therapeutic Writing on Family Life and Friendship, Cabin Press, 2020, ISBN 9780995688223, paperback, £14.00 As Monica Suswin points out in her timely book, the past year has given us all an object lesson in boundaries. “Emotions are spilling over psychological boundaries into panic and anxiety,” she writes. “Never in my life have I gone out into the street with my smile hidden behind a barrier.” Human relationships make us who we are; yet they are fraught with misunderstanding and difficulty. Suswin aims to show how creative and therapeutic writing “can help us achieve a fluidity in how we approach others”. The title reflects a similar fluidity: how boundaries change, over time and under different pressures; and the work we ourselves can do to move them. The book is arranged in four main sections: looking at dreams; physical and non-physical boundaries; relationships and emotional truths; and writing fiction from a real-life event. In the first section, Suswin explains how to investigate the rich and fertile territory of a dream. She describes how a difficult relationship with her parents was made concrete, and resolved, through the imagery of a dream house, where boundaries (lacking in the past) could be clearly observed. When transcribing a dream, she is alert to words which can spark a new piece of writing: in this case, a crossroad became a “cross road”, reflecting the anger and disappointment on both sides of the relationship. The section on boundaries examines those that are fixed and unfixed, including time; space; language, and the boundaries of words. She also considers the ultimate boundary, between life and death, in the context of the untimely death of a friend through cancer. Suswin comes to understand how her teenage dislike of boundaries can be addressed in her creative life; she can alter her own boundaries “within the safety of my own writing process”. Writing “naively” in a young child’s voice, using simple language, enables her to access her “impetuous and mischievous inner child”, and to create a safe place for that child: work that can be done only by herself, as an adult. “Wall fictions” looks at the ability of metaphor to break through the boundaries of literal thinking. The image of a crumbling wall enabled Suswin to understand a friend’s defensiveness and hostility. Writing about the wall “managed and then dissolved the anger” – after a break, the relationship was resumed. “It is impossible to really get inside the boundary of another’s skin,” she says, “yet this writing allowed me to do so imaginatively. And then the impasse I felt in real life dissolved into compassion.” The final section deals with fictionalizing upsetting real-life events: in this case, a birthday celebration. By transferring, not the characters, but the emotional undercurrents, Suswin found insights into puzzling behaviour. It’s fun and easy to read: even the tablecloth, covered in wine and crumbs, gets a voice. And a surprising emotion is revealed. Each chapter is followed by helpful notes and exercises to aid creativity, including the use of mind maps and freewriting. Suswin points out that, if using such freewheeling methods, it’s in the editing process that the boundaries of concise thought and a distinct style can be achieved. By fictionalizing difficult relationships, “respect for writing about them may bring more understanding and a deeper revelation. And allow for a letting go of irritated feelings.” Such an approach takes time. But Suswin shows clearly how beneficial the investment can be: “Writing helps me to make sense when I have grappled with areas of my life 66 Writing in Education
which appeared to be overwhelming, chaotic, and unmanageable.” The benefits of creative therapeutic writing are already well known in the caring professions. As society slowly gets back to normal, and we resume our busy lives, there has been much talk about learning the lessons of the past year, and becoming more mindful. In Suswin’s view, “We will have to encircle ourselves with living as well as we are able, whilst acknowledging the interconnectedness of all our boundaries: looking after our bodies, living with each other respectfully, placing our feet on this earth with awareness.” Hopefully, this accessible book will bring the practice of creative therapeutic writing to a wider, and receptive, audience. Review by Sarah Hegarty. Sarah’s short fiction has been published by Mslexia, Cinnamon Press and the Mechanics’ Institute Review, and shortlisted for the Fish and Bridport prizes. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Chichester and is writer-in-residence at George Abbot School, Guildford. www.sarahhegarty.co.uk
Dixon, J. Purl, Shoestring Press, 2020, ISBN 9781912524716, paperback, £10.00 Jo Dixon’s first full collection is organized into three definitional striations, but its storied voices and whirling choreography offers myriad intersections, cyclicities, and dances between the daily and the sacred. Dixon’s poems feel equally at home in both the cardboard boxes of memory-soaked attics, but also upon shorelines and atop glacial valleys. We venture from the Grand Canyon, Moonstone Beach and South Africa to the National Memorial Arboretum, Terry’s Fish ‘N’ Chips, and cigarette-bathed family rooms. The poems’ voices and vantage points purl between bisto-infused loungescapes, wading birds, and whales, ranging across timelines but always through a pleasingly incantatory arc of threaded narratives. Purl, as the book’s section structure outlines, variously means a craftsperson’s ornate thread, a swirling, murmuring sound, largely of water but also of breath, smoke, voice, and music, and finally, a destructive force enough to send one tumbling head over heels. Each poem is found under one particular meaning of the word, and yet the threading, whirling, up-ending versions of the word are in rampant cross-pollination across the collection. Many of the first section’s poems seem to contain moments of the other two sections’ primary forces, both forceful waters, and murmuring voices. The loss of human contact in ‘The Neighbour’s Shoes’, captured visually through the italicized dialogue of the lonely neighbour interspersed within the speaker’s fourth-wall breaking narration, so beautifully comprises the susurrant music of remembering “she”, with an upcoming return to his homeland, after “she kept me here.” This plunging backwards and forwards in time pivots on a simple but loaded detail of the exchange: “at the bottom of the stairs, he talks half an hour more.” Dixon often uses the axis of two poems side by side to allow the poem pairs to influence one another, and one of the most effective uses of this juxtaposing is across the space of pages 12-13, where Bridge Slide/ ‘And The Phoenix Has Come’, a collage poem layering pieces of a New Civil Engineer article regarding a bridge’s construction over Nottingham Station with snatches of Ted Hughes’ ‘And The Phoenix Has Come’, lays next to Haida Chief, an ekphrastic encounter with a cedar-wood Totem pole. These unexpected pairings come in many shapes and forms, and another fascinating balancing act is that of human and beast. There are eco-poetic interrogations sown throughout the book, with observance and knowledge two crucial elements suggested to ensure the preservation and experience of wild species and spaces. Animals often appear twice or several times in the poems, but their roles as characters and motifs constantly morph, never staying in the same role, nor becoming stale. In one moment, the breach of a whale leaves the white-spray watermark of ‘a dahlia in full bloom’, but another whale in another poem is discovered with ‘quid scars on the box-shaped head/an amputated jawbone and conical teeth.’ Writing in Education 67
The short Merwin-esque poem ‘Green’ rejects prior knowledge as a crucial facet for a meaningful encounter. The speaker admits to not yet knowing what names the fish swimming in the tarn go by, and has to guess at the name of another bird, yet the sacred act of witnessing is at the heart of meaning here; to see the ‘heart-shaped hole’ made by ‘two cormorants poised/ back to back’ and the sight of an unconfirmed avian, ‘merlin or sparrowhawk/freewheels into the scrub’ is to know them. Moths sometimes mirror an oppressively same-old domestic life, yet in the next poem, a rescued moth heralds the teeming possibilities inherent in the present and future tenses of a character entering a new moment in her life. Knowing and unknowing is also enacted constantly through language choices; this collection contains a trove of delightfully strange new terms, words, and names, cleverly coupled with regular lashings of intense accessibility. To see and to be seen are two methods of eternal presence in these poems. There are epiphanies, once seen and never forgotten, but also cyclical commemorations, acts of returning to see again and again. Purl holds the ability to remain tangible in its questioning, whether it opts to gyre into a close relation’s photo albums and a neighbour’s old belongings, soar skyward and seaward into cetaceans and seagulls, or pull a piece of explorative research into the consciousness of the poet’s contemporary climate. Dixon seems occupied with the act of looking, not what is found, and the various mentions of persons and creatures being variably seen and unseen, seem a clarion call to this greater concentration on the pursuit of such vantages; only in doing so will what is seen at the finish line be considered treasure. Review By Cameron George Stuart. Cameron is a poet and teacher originally from, and now back residing in, Bedford. He received his Poetry MFA at Saint Mary’s College of California and has taught writing at St Mary’s College of California, Bedford College, and Berkeley. He is a lecturer in English at Bedford College, and also serves as poet in residence at Bedford’s Eagle Bookshop, where he runs a creative writing group. He believes the poem is you.
Monica Suswin, Rope Mates – creative therapeutic writing on companionship for writers, Cabin Press, ISBN 9780995688230, paperback, £14.00 Those working with creative writing for therapeutic purposes—either as a facilitator for others or for their own benefit—will, I think, find this book an enjoyable read, although the precise nature of its usefulness within this field is difficult to pin down. That subtitle, ‘creative therapeutic writing on companionship for writers’, gives us a clue: here we have author Monica Suswin—whose background is in humanistic psychotherapy—presenting her own piece of ‘creative therapeutic writing’ (with both comments about it, as well as entertaining deviations), on the subject of ‘companionship for writers’. She begins her examination of this sense of companionship by considering the benefits of writing groups and mentoring options—things that most people who write, either as a hobby or with a more serious focus on publication, begin with and progress to. She then introduces her own cast of other ‘companions’, including childhood memories, dreams, spiritual belief and her curiosity about the world around her and her inner world. All of these would, I suggest, sum up the areas most writers plunder for their writing, though the author’s honest, open-hearted sharing of her own journey through them is both entertaining and, especially for writers still grappling with the question ‘what should I write about?’, undoubtedly useful. Each chapter offers a number of page-length panels entitled “Writing to do”, encouraging readers to explore their own writing for therapy and, perhaps, offering practitioners ideas to use with students/clients. The starting point for many of the prompts is rather vague—for example “Take a theme which you find interesting”—and beginner writers might feel a little daunted. This is a pity, because, midway through the book, there are some excellent page-length panels giving spot-on advice for those new writers, including guidance about “The Timed Write” and redrafting and editing. In some ways, it is the editing of the book itself which is a little off-key—we are past the halfway point before we reach the enormously helpful panel for new writers, detailing essential things such as the fact that “paper for writing” can be simply “Backs of used envelopes at the kitchen table”. 68 Writing in Education
It is fair to assume that some of the book’s potential readers might be those embarking for the first time on writing for their own therapeutic purposes, and may come to it with some vulnerabilities. It is worth mentioning, then, that the author’s choice of the ‘rope mates’ metaphor of the title (taken, she tells us, from the mountaineering world and the support amongst climbers from those to whom they are roped) might not be universally positive. That Suswin admits in the book that she has been “near suicide” makes us wonder why she does not also explore here the negative connotations which the word ‘rope’ brings with it (even the terms ‘roped-in’, ‘on the ropes’ and ‘feeling ropey’ are not positive ones). Similarly, anyone using this book as a source of prompts for their therapeutic writing groups will sometimes need to use caution—Suswin herself admits that for her, “some events are too painful to write about”, and prompts such as “Write up your own taboo subject” and “Imagine the umbilicus attaching you to your mother” clearly require sensitive handling. Suswin’s own journey of self-nurturing and enlightenment through therapeutic writing is the thread—or , dare I say it, rope—of joy running through this book. She is, in effect, her own guinea pig for the positive effects of creative therapeutic writing, and her affirmations about her practice are inspiring and motivational. She celebrates the fact that “being heard” in a writing group can in itself be therapeutic—”the more I shared with others, the more I felt truly myself”—admits that all her writing, whether private journaling or more ‘public’ pieces, about either her inner or outer life, “makes me more me, more whole”. And, ultimately, the companionship she both seeks and recommends is the words themselves: “Writing makes everything more real. My whole being becomes infused with my own words. The ones I choose to explain who I am and what motivates me. When I write like that I am never lonely. I am accompanied invisibly on my journey of words.” Review by Dawn Gorman. Dawn uses creative writing and aural history work for therapeutic purposes with groups and individuals, and is a poetry mentor. She presents The Poetry Place on West Wilts Radio, is Poetry Editor of Caduceus magazine, organises the nationally-acclaimed poetry reading series Words & Ears, and collaborates widely with writers, visual artists and musicians. Her poetry books include Instead, Let Us Say (Dempsey & Windle, 2019, winner of the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize), and two Pushcart Prizenominated books, Aloneness Is A Many-headed Bird (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2020, collaboratively written with Rosie Jackson) and This Meeting of Tracks (Toadlily Press, 2013).
Elkin, R. The Leading Question, High Window Press: Swindon, ISBN 9798696331614, paperback, £10.00 Despite the Great Irish Famine of the mid-1800s not being in our lifetimes, this does not mean it is irrelevant today. Many readers may have ancestors who were affected by such a tragic period in Irish history; others will likely know about the terrible blight and pestilence that impacted on thousands of people. The Leading Question is a collection of poems written by prize-winning poet Roger Elkin. The book is part of a significant sequence (The F Word) which explores the famine through different approaches. Elkin’s collection stems from a visit to Strokestown Park House, in County Roscommon, which is home to the Irish National Famine Museum. His poetry is eclectic; it is heart-wrenching and thought-provoking; it takes readers to a place in history, but also focuses on contemporary issues that can affect so many of us today. The opening poem, ‘Holding’, is comprised of triplets which explore the simplicity and beauty of potatoes— ‘… rounded, smooth pebble-like’. In some ways, it is reminiscent of Seamus Heaney’s work, with the uncomplicated at its core. ‘Stable Truths’ is a beautifully-written homage to The Irish National Famine Museum. Elkin forces readers to consider this terrible period in history, and makes us question if we are ignorant of this through no fault of our own, or is it more intentional, a bury-our-heads-in-the-sand approach? ‘Booleying’, with its brilliant, almost onomatopoeic title, is suitably evocative and rhythmic, with ‘…cotton-bog and sedge/the bracken-crooks… sulphur maze of gorse…’ Here, clearly, through rich and sensory imagery, Elkin helpfully Writing in Education 69
explains what ‘booleying’ is: a time when young people accompanied cattle to the mountains in the summer months. Contrastingly, ‘The Potato Blight: Phytophthora infestans’ is much rawer, a poem that explores the impact the blight had on potatoes, with the ‘… fungus spores…’ as well as the immediate beauty of the ‘… whitish fringe of growth/ furring down like the leaf’s contours’ juxtaposed with ‘… the pall of decomposition-stink…’ There is little doubt that this is devastating and certainly unforgettable, regardless of one’s knowledge about the famine. Some of Elkin’s poems play with form in unconventional ways, such as the bullet-pointed listing in ‘Official Remedies’ and ‘Recipe for dealing with diseased potatoes’. Here, readers are advised how to tackle the challenges that would have affected so many people at the time. In ‘Cooking Cabbages’, Elkin deviates—the focus here is not on potatoes but on the importance that cabbages would have played in people’s diets. The cabbage, underrated and often abhorred, is portrayed as a beautiful thing, from ‘… the plusher, fuller Savoy…’ to ‘… the fatter, January King’—it is fascinating how a vegetable, perceived by many to lack interest or excitement, can be something alive, personified in many different ways: ‘skin leather-crinkled’ and ‘surrendering/its heart’ are two such examples. In ‘The Big Issue’, Elkin adopts a free-verse form, contemporary and anaphoric in style, consisting of questions without answers— ‘when does hunger become famine become starvation.’ In ‘Dan Byrne’s Hunger’, the series of sections allows readers to go on a journey with the central character, and by the end of the tenth section, the overarching theme of movement and migration really comes to the fore, entitled ‘Going West’ and written in a dense, concentrated stanza, where, despite the intensity of the journey being described, there is hope that ‘New Edens would begin’—this is suitably uplifting. In contrast, the collection’s final offering, ‘This Silence’, is upfront and candid with telling readers about ‘… the thrown-away nameless generations without headstones, something that is often, very sadly, the result of conflicts the world over. More recently, perhaps, we could liken this to the pandemic and the horrific images we have seen on our TV screens, of coffins piled up in impoverished countries without the infrastructure and support to cope. Terrible, in so many ways. Elkin’s title poem plays with the form, from the conventional opening stanzas through to listing ‘Bills of Entry’. This, perhaps, allows readers to consider the true impact of the Irish Potato Famine, whilst remembering how fortunate we are not to have experienced such a tragedy. It is important to remember what happened in the past—it is the adage of ‘history repeating itself’ but we can certainly learn a lot from long-ago episodic events. The Leading Question is an intense read, and one which should leave readers with answers to some questions about this period in history, as well as a desire to find out more. Don Paterson says about Elkin’s work that [the poems] ‘… burst with sharply observed and well-chosen detail…’ and one cannot argue with this. Review by Matthew Tett. Matthew is a freelance educator and writer living and working in Wiltshire. He is Writing in Education’s reviews editor and he coordinates Corsham’s StoryTown festival.
Thomas, M.W. Under Smoky Light, Oswestry: Offa’s Press, 2020. ISBN 9781999694340, 35 pages, £5.95 West Midlands based Offa’s Press has developed a very strong list of regional poetry over recent years, with some excellent anthologies and single author collections. Under Smoky Light is the eleventh book from Worcestershire writer Michael W. Thomas, a widely published poet, fiction writer, and playwright, with the delightful and intriguing title of “Poet-at-Large in the Navy of the Conch Republic of Key West”. It is mostly a book about beginnings and endings, viewed through the lens of maturity. The interest in beginnings can be seen in poems like ‘The Willenhall Road’, which reflects on a redeveloped region of Bilston, in the Black Country: All I was is now an island on a late, over-budget expressway. 70 Writing in Education
He goes on to explore his emotional attachment to the place as it was, and the significant moments that shaped his boyhood identity—the “first hesitations of summer”, his “first ever kiss”—lamenting the loss of that world, and a past he can now only glimpse in “the small hours”: Only the small hours call back to the island the shimmer of walls and coping-stones, the brush of smoke and laughter. Only a single fox commanding the moon-bled lanes has care enough to step over my heart, to skirt around my beginnings. The language reflects the elegiac tone of the book, but Thomas avoids mawkish nostalgia: here, as elsewhere, the imagery is strong, and we feel that memory and emotion have been through the full imaginative process. He continues the theme in poems like ‘Impresario’, about his father’s unrealised dreams, and ‘Old Boys’, where two childhood friends meet up in later life. The latter explores the nature of friendship, and how time erodes that bond: Now we look each other up and down as at some long-surrendered coat glimpsed on the far side of all that’s gone. The boyhood friendship was a union of convenience between two “baffled souls”, each creating a shadow in which the other “could noiselessly hide”. Reflections on the past register a sense of loss, and sit alongside poems that contemplate a limited future: ‘A buck and two bits (after Edward Hopper’s “Gas”)’ creates a monologue for Hopper’s underworked gas pump attendant, with the title of the poem, ‘A buck and two bits’, denoting his day’s takings—it skilfully details his predicament in 1930s America, the failure of the New Deal, and hassles from “the Company” who phone him twice a day to ask “how the figures do seem/to be laying themselves out”. The attendant’s world shrinks as the money dries up: “Less and less I take in / the trees across the road. Every night, it feels, /they drag a yard closer”. Thomas also explores loss and impending demise in more personal ways, as ‘In a postscripted summer’, where he ponders “the silence/that will at last come in shadows”, and seems reconciled to the loss of the past, and the “silence” and “shadows” it casts: “you may do no more than stand in it”, he tells us, as in a postscripted summer when this time around the days ask nothing of you save that you gaze deep into them and do them the kindness of letting them gaze back. The past is irrevocable, except insofar as we can learn from it. Elsewhere, in ‘Coda’, the speaker gradually loses himself, fading from the world until he’s merely “a fidget of wind among the yet-to-die”, with just enough presence to make the living “tug their collar”. Despite his focus on endings, the end itself is always deferred for Thomas. We saw in ‘Old Boys’ that “all that’s gone” can still be “glimpsed”, and this remains so, even in death: the final poem, ‘Shepherd’, imagines his father in the afterlife, assisting souls in transition to whatever lies beyond—they are “tipped out/into his waiting arms/for the brace-up/the soothing murmur/the slow-step/the road after road/with the first of night/ already at the sky”. While we glimpse “the first of night” in many Thomas poems, then, it never falls completely dark: he always creates a compelling space in which the remains of light can be seen, and savoured. A delightful collection. Review by Paul McDonald. Paul taught at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty-five years, where he led the creative programme. He took early retirement in 2019 to write full time. He is the author of twenty books, including poetry, fiction and scholarship, the most recent of which is Allen Ginsberg: Cosmopolitan Comic (2020).
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Ash, A, Clark, M.D. and Drew, C. (eds) Imaginative Teaching through Creative Writing: A Guide for Secondary Classrooms, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, ISBN 9781350152694 £85.00 This book landed in my mailbox just at the right time. I’ve recently embarked on a creative non-fiction unit with my Grade 11 students at the Shanghai American School and was searching for inspiration. Our English Department set ‘creativity’ as a priority three years ago and we’ve stuck with it ever since, come hell, high water—or Covid. Imaginative teaching is always running a bit threadbare as this time in the term, so I was excited to get an injection of fresh ideas and perspectives. And I wasn’t disappointed. Piecing together accounts of teaching creatively from 25 teachers and professors, the guide is more than a practical handbook and rewards a bit of time investment. The book is divided into two halves—the first being a rationale and pedagogical defence for including creative writing in the classroom. Whilst we appreciate that creative writing can foster student voice and control of the narrative, there remains a systemic bias in favour of teacher-led expository and analytical writing in the US and UK curricula which can be hard to push back against. I recognize my own deep-rooted preferences here: at the back of my mind lurks the worry about the viability of the ‘writing workshop’ model with its relegation of the teacher to the sidelines. How do I sell it to a class of nineteen 15-year-olds who, every year without fail, react with surprise and horror to the idea of ‘creative writing’ like it is something they have never done before? And when they actually start writing, how do I orchestrate the draft writing process to prevent the class turning into a boring ‘study hall’ type session as students engage with the computer but not with one another? How do I foster a supportive, irony-free environment—one where they will they be open to sharing feelings—amidst a chorus of “I don’t know what to write!” and “This is no good”? And, scariest of all, how can I (an IB Lit, AP Lit and past IGCSE English teacher deeply immersed in the analysis genre of student writing) feel confident assessing creative writing against a rubric? This book addresses many of these questions and helpfully plots creative writing activities against their matching US Common Core standards for English Language Arts. Whilst this is less relevant for UK teaching professionals, the imaginative approaches shared here will spice up the GCSE classroom no end, as long as you’re open to a bit of creative chaos. The second half is where teacher creativity really kicks in, as experiments and experiences with creative writing in the classroom are recounted through a series of essays sprinkled with humour and empathy. I was intrigued by “The Poetry of Maths and Science”, where we are introduced to the idea of using Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophioe Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) as fodder for student creativity. Step One: Rip out the pages of the book. Step 2: Students admire the beauty of their given page—variables, sentences, lines, angles and formulas, noticing details like repetition (‘surface’, ‘valleys, ‘hollows’, ‘space’) and word structure. Step 3: They write a reflection on what they noticed— about the page, about Newton’s principles. Step 4: Everyone shares one sentence that stood out for them. After that, Krieger (a teacher at Union-Endicott Central School District) suggests, you can do a “black out poetry” activity or have students develop creative non-fiction around Newton’s language. Sticking with science, another activity she suggests is “blindfold sensory writing” by having students run their hands over and around a model of the brain borrowed from the Biology Department and write about the experience, with ‘anatomic specificity or metaphorically’. As schools are increasingly targeting 21st century skills, rather than discrete bodies of knowledge, it makes sense to integrate English writing skills into other domains in creative ways. Another idea I am excited to try out is ‘fake translations’ shared by Amanda Clarke and Na Cohen at Viewpoint School. The concept is simple—take a poem in a language students don’t know, such as Finnish, and have them translate it. Then, compare translations for what they noticed about the shape of the poem—in particular, the technical elements such as repetition, lineation, stanza form and punctuation which they have translated to their own poems. I am curious to see if this works. I can see it might be a nice intro activity to looking at structure in English poems. At the back of the book is a small, but handy, section on ‘workshop’ procedures and ‘peer feedback’ forms that can be used with poetry and fiction writing activities. Indescribably more valuable to me were the mentor texts referenced by many of the contributors and I have already shared some with my own students. Oona Marie Abrams’ essay on incorporating creative writing into her AP Lit course yielded many gems including Penny Kittle (https://pennykittle. net/) and her wealth of free online resources for teachers. “There’s a man buried in your kitchen”, writes Rick Reilly in “Next Time, Stop the Freaking race!” A successful hook for creative non-fiction, if ever I saw one. Review by Rachel Wright. Rachel is a high school English teacher at the Shanghai American School. 72 Writing in Education
Westbrook, S. and Ryan, J. Beyond Craft: An Anti-Handbook for Creative Writers, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, ISBN 9781350152021, paperback, £21.99 As a teacher of creative writing and a teacher-educator of creative writing teachers, I found this a fascinating and important book. The authors are Steve Westbrook, who teaches creative writing at California State University, and James Ryan, who is editor-in-chief of Journal of Creative Writing Studies. They are well placed to critique current creative writing pedagogies, particularly ones that are happening in the United States. They see the teaching of creative writing as being inhibited and harmed by the obsession that many tutors have on ‘craft’: the idea that students can be taught creative writing by practicing a set of writing strategies. Westbrook and Ryan write: To our thinking, the problem lies not in the concern with craft itself but in the exclusion of nearly everything else. Too often issues of craft are not placed in relation to a whole host of other subjects. In fact, the impression most handbook authors give is that the discipline of creative writing seeks to somehow artificially isolate formal issues of craft from larger contexts, concerns and functions related to writing (3) This ‘anti-handbook’ seeks to address this central problem for much teaching of creative writing by exploring the historical roots of creative writing pedagogies (Section One Where Creative Writing Comes From); the identities of creative writers (Section Two Who Creative Writers Are); how and why writers ‘find their audiences, or how publishing works’ (Section Three); and the future of creative writing (Section Four). This structure is very helpful for the reader in terms of navigating what is a complex theoretical and practical set of issues. In the historical section, Westbrook and Ryan lay some of the blame for narrow minded pedagogies on the Iowa creative writing workshop, set up in the late 1930s in the United States. Here the much-imitated format of the Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) creative writing workshop was established, with ideas such as sharing participants’ work, gagging the author being workshopped from saying anything as they listen to the critiques, the focus upon ‘craft’, i.e. orthodoxies like ‘show, don’t tell’ and so on, being established. It is still the approach taken by many creative writing courses today throughout the world, but it can be problematic when there is both an implicit and explicit assumption that the author is a solitary writer who is alone in their quest to improve their work and that they can control the meaning of their work. As Westbrook and Ryan point out, by exploring the post-structuralist Roland Barthes’ notions of the ‘death of the author’ (79-82), it’s theoretically questionable that a writer can control the interpretations of their work and that the author is the shaper of meaning. They unpick highly problematic notions of certain authors being perceived as ‘solitary geniuses’ who spontaneously produce masterpieces, and seek to ‘re-purpose’ spontaneity by drawing upon the academic research of Hayes and Flower, and Wendy Bishop. They argue for a ‘process pedagogy’ (65), a way of learning to write that values process as much as product, which involves writers giving themselves permission to write ‘shitty first drafts’ (66) rather expecting fully-formed masterpieces to emerge straightaway. They could have drawn upon the important work written by Peter Elbow (1998) and the National Writing Project (2021 US and UK) in this regard, which suggests a similar approach. In a series of illuminating case studies, they show how some of our most famous writers such as T.S. Eliot and Raymond Carver benefitted from high degrees of collaboration with editors, who were practically co-authors in the end. Eliot famously worked with Ezra Pound, who took a hatchet to the first drafts of Eliot’s seminal poem about alienation, The Wasteland (1974). Pound, like Carver’s editor Gordon Lish, was more than an editor; their cuts were so draconian that they were essentially co-creators. Their roles were hidden from a reading public, which was in thrall—and possibly still is—to the myth of the ‘single author’. Ryan and Westbrook write: ‘As we envision the future of creative writing, we envision one that treats collaboration less as a dirty little secret and more as an accepted and normal part of the writing process’ (97-98). A particularly powerful case study is their discussion of ‘A Collaborative Poem for the Hazara’, a victimized people in Afghanistan, which combined the work of 23 poets from 16 countries. They show here the power of online publishing and collaboration. The second half of the book is devoted to how creative writing is now published. Again, with some Writing in Education 73
fantastic case studies they debunk some familiar myths which corrupt the discourses around the teaching of creative writing: they show how the mainstream publishing world operates and how its machinations inevitably lead to important voices, particularly voices from marginalized groups and communities, being downgraded, marginalized and erased. They show that publishing work is an intricate and time-consuming game. Refreshingly, they do not condemn self-publishing or posting work on blogs, but rather show some authors can really benefit from these modes of publication. Overall, I would strongly recommend this book for teachers and practitioners of creative writing. It is geared at the US market but so much of what is said here is relevant both in theoretical and practical terms to the English market. There could have been more focus upon the reasons why people write and a discussion of ‘intersectionality’ (Crenshaw 1989): the ways in which the different issues of race, class, ethnicity, gender intersect to create inequality and oppression. But possibly this will be something they could consider for their next book. References Crenshaw, Kimberley (1989) “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol.: Iss. 1, Article 8. Available at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 Elbow, P. (1998). Writing without teachers (Second ed.). Oxford: OUP. Eliot, T. (1974). Collected poems. London: Faber. The National Writing Project UK (2021) URL accessed 17th March 2021: https://www.nationalwritingproject.uk/ The National Writing Project US (2021) URL accessed 17th March 2021: https://www.nwp.org/ Review by Francis Gilbert. Francis is a senior lecturer in education at Goldsmiths, University of London and head of the MA in Creative Writing and Education. He has published many books, mainly focused upon educational themes, including ‘I’m A Teacher, Get Me Out of Here’ (Short Books 2004) and ‘The Last Day of Term’ (Short Books 2011). Most recently he published a novel, ‘Snow on the Danube’ (Blue Door Press 2019).
Clark, F. A Practical Guide to Creative Writing in Schools: Seven Creative Writing Projects for Ages 8-14, Routledge, 2021, ISBN 9780367562649, paperback, £29.99 Improving children’s knowledge and understanding of the English curriculum while having fun and being creative is the focus of this collection of school creative writing projects. Fiona Clark has worked as a teacher and school leader for over two decades, has been writer in residence in schools across the UK, and has a particular interest in young people’s emotional resilience and wellbeing. This experience is evident throughout this practical and inspiring book which offers seven tried-and-tested projects to use with KS2 and KS3 children. Each project in the book explores a different literary genre or writing style. These are: poetry; autobiography; detective stories; gothic conventions; responding to drama; producing a school newsletter; and responding to prose. Each project chapter includes detailed instructions and resources for a series of one-hour workshops which end with pupils publishing an anthology of their writing on that topic. This means they can experience the journey from planning to publication and see themselves as writers—something Clark says can be, “a significant and hugely positive moment”. Everything is clear and well thought out—from the choice of texts and themes covered to the instructions on how to run workshops and publish the collections—which means each project is ready to deliver. Clark takes care to include information gained from testing the activities in real life classrooms, for example suggesting ways they might be 74 Writing in Education
adapted for different situations or highlighting areas where pupils may get stuck or feel overwhelmed. There are time-saving “helping hand” sections which provide lists of answers, suggested prompt questions, and background information on texts and Clark is good at breaking down projects that may otherwise seem daunting, such as publishing a school newspaper, into easy-to-follow steps. As well as the seven project chapters, the book contains a section on evaluating your project which would be especially helpful if you needed to demonstrate its success and impact to secure funds or support. I enjoyed the emphasis on writing for enjoyment and reinforcing positive messages, including by using the motto #wearewriters #weareenough. As such, I thought the most useful exercises in the book are those designed to show pupils that their own ideas and experiences are important. For example, the poetry project includes exercises where pupils could discuss what things are special about their family and prepare a presentation on what they love about their city/town/village. There are also some excellent resources around planning stories, particularly in the detective stories and gothic conventions sections, these being a good way of letting pupils experience and understand the different ways writers begin pieces of writing. If anything, I would have liked more exercises that would let pupils experience how writers work, particularly in being able to experiment and take risks without feeling it has to be right first time. For example, using personal notebooks for writing or doodling that aren’t shared or assessed or examining the messy first drafts and plans of writers as well as their final published books. The book would be ideal for teachers looking for creative writing projects that can be delivered as part of regular English lessons or in other ways, for example during an after-school writers’ club. It would also be a useful and adaptable resource for anyone working with young writers in schools, particularly those wanting to make sure that projects fitted with the English curriculum and were appropriate and workable for particular age groups.
Review by Amanda Quinn. Amanda is a writer and tutor who lives in the northeast of England. Her short fiction has been published by Shooter Literary Magazine, Open Pen, Ellipsis Zine, Butcher’s Dog, Neon Literary Magazine, and others. She teaches creative writing for various organisations including the Workers’ Educational Association. She is currently working with local schools and Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums as creative writing artist practitioner for the Museums and Galleries Partners in Education (MaGPiE) Project funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Teacher Development Fund. She can be found online at www.amandaquinn.co.uk and on Twitter @amandaqwriter.
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