Last Friday I went with a small group of
students to Footscray Park campus if Victoria University, where they were to do
writing workshops with people who are professional writers and also teach
there.
I went to Fiction A with a student who was on
her own - the others had all been allocated Fiction B. The tutor said that she
expected teachers in the class to take part in the workshop, and she herself
would be writing.
We started with two short stories which we then
sat down in groups and discussed, using questions she had given to go with
them. After reporting back to the group, we were given slips of paper pulled
from a jar to get us started. She said she didn't mind if we swapped or even
wrote our own stuff as long as we wrote something. I personally prefer to limit
myself to what I have been given, so I stuck to what I had been given: Flinders
Street Station at 2.00 am, a bright burst of light.
Here's what I wrote in the 15-20 minutes we were
given:
I'd just
missed the last train home. And the last tram. There were no Nightrider buses
around and not much left in my wallet to pay for one of the cabs waiting at the
taxi rank outside the station; I 'd spent it all at the fan auction that
afternoon, buying an autographed photo of Harrison Ford. I had to have it! It
was signed back in the seventies when he
was young and gorgeous. If I'd gone to an auction in the US or bought it
on eBay, it would have cost four or five times the price I'd paid.
The street
wasn't empty; there was music coming from Young and Jackson's pub across the
road and a few drunks staggering along. But I felt alone. Should I head back to
the hotel and see if James would let me crash on his room floor? He'd say yes,
but for the wrong reasons. Still, I couldn't stay here. There was always the
hotel foyer if he was a pain.
Shivering
in my Princess Leia costume, I sighed and started back up Swanston St. Started,
but didn't get far. Something came out of the sky with a flash of light and
landed in the middle of the tram tracks outside St Paul's. It was smaller than
the smallest flying saucer I'd ever seen in any movie, about twice the size of
a van. Nobody else even glanced at it. Hey, Melbourne!
Someone
stepped out. He was shorter than me, much shorter. His skin was green and there
was a comb on his head instead of hair, but otherwise, he could pass for a
human male. Pulling something out of his pocket, he gestured at me. It was a
flyer for Continuum 12, the science fiction convention I was attending.
"Mm?"
he squeaked. "Ah, aah, mm?"
He was
asking directions, I guessed. Stunned, I pointed towards the other end of
Swanston Street.
"Thx!"
he said.
Thanks?
"Uh,
you're welcome."
As he
started towards his tiny spaceship I called, "Wait! Can you give me a
lift?"
He seemed
to understand me, because he grinned and waved invitingly at the ship.
I climbed
in beside him. It was squashy, but I couldn't help grinning myself. Wait till
James saw me arrive!
The End
Not brilliant, but hey, 15 minutes! I don't
expect kids to do even this much. I think I can use these ideas in my own
class. It will make them feel they have achieved something. Last semester's
class was mainly students who love writing and do it in their own time. This
term I have one of them back, but
of the rest, one wants to learn how to finish a story to help with her literacy
class, the rest aren't quite sure. It just seemed a nice thing to do. So their
needs will be different. And this seems like a good way to get them going,
because they won't be wanting to do their own stories to publish online.
After lunch - when I
chatted with writer Michael Hyde, who was doing a life writing workshop in the
afternoon - I went to a poetry workshop with another student who was on her
own. It wouldn't have been my choice, but I wanted to keep her company and her
face brightened when I told her I was going with her.
And in the end, it was
good. The tutor was Sherryl Clarke, who visited our school last year,
compliments of YABBA. She started it off with getting us to cut up bits of newspaper,
choosing words which we then had to use in a poem. I ended up with a sales
catalogue! Still, I had a go.
An open letter to a millionaire philanthropist (newspaper cutouts)
Dick Smith,
Please do more
To save the reef
From dynamite and mines.
Take action now!
40 per cent of marine species need you!
Call Mac
And talk about marine life NOW!
We finished with a poem
using three words chosen at random from a pile everyone had created, with
adjectives - say, turquoise rather than blue - nouns, senses. The deal was, you
had to use each word at least three times in the poem. My words were shopping
centre, japonica and taste. I suspect
japonica was written by one of the other teachers! Still, I wrote my poem. Here
it is:
The Senses of Home (take three words, shuffle around)
Exhausted by Boxing Day sales,
I sit in a cafe at the shopping centre food court,
Sipping, the taste of camellia leaves
On my tongue,
And think of the japonica waving
Outside the window of a home long gone,
Camellia Japonicas also grow in tubs
Everywhere in the shopping centre,
The smells from the food court,
The shopping centre bustle,
The smooth table under my hands,
Even the taste of the tea in my mouth,
Leaves of the camellia plant,
Or taste of chocolate mud cake
Cannot match the sight of flaming red japonica,
The sight that speaks of home.
And here's the one we had
to do with no more than three lines:
Joyfully,
I watch my class at work,
Promise of tomorrow.
Not bad, three poems in a
session after having written none since university!
This session might also
find its way into my Creative Writing classes...
So it was as much a
professional development for me as for the students.
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