Useful Websites ...

As people mention useful websites for writers to me, I'll pop them on here.

Visit Daniel Blythe's www.danielblythe.moonfruit.com for excellent information and sensible advice about getting published, among other things.

Andy Wattie (Barnsley Writers) recommends: www.poetryscotland.co.uk which includes the following:

POETRY WORKSHOP COMMENTS: A short glossary
I'd like to hear that again = I was half asleep with boredom.
If you left out the first two and last two lines and reworked stanza four ... = Scrap it.
Where did you get that idea? = Rubbish.
The language is so unusual in this poem = The language is grammatically and syntactictically incomprehensible.
Did that actually happen? = What a sordid life you must lead.
... and more ... from James Hall Thomson

Oh,dear!

Also highly recommended:
www.poetrymagazines.co.uk when you want to extend their reading of excellent contemporary poetry and don't know where to start. This site also gives you a good idea of where you might begin to send your poems - which magazines might like your work.
www.poemhunter.com will help you find that poem!
and why not e-mail info@carcanet.co.uk to join the subscription list for the Carcanet monthly newsletter, which always contains a sample poem from a recent Carcanet publication.

There are so many brilliant websites waiting to be discovered!

Exciting Minds!

Creative Partnerships Exciting Minds Conference was held in Manchester on 27 and 28 November, 2006. I met teachers and artists who are clearly exciting the minds of young people up and down the country.

One of the speakers on the first morning, introduced by the wonderfully creative writer for children, Michael Rosen, and followed by the inspirational educator, Stephen Heppell, was the Managing Director of Unilever Ice Cream and Frozen Foods Ltd (which includes Birds Eye), Fergus Balfour.

If you were there, you will recognise that the first section of this piece, like its title, is “found” poetry, in the sense that it is a packaged version of Mr Balfour’s own words.



“Frozen is the new fresh …!”
A Captain of Industry addresses the young

“I want to awake your passion
your truth-telling
your ability to observe
your astonishment
I want you to aspire to higher things

and you will be rewarded
in the pocket-book
and in the soul.”


Ah, but the young will observe
(among your frozen fish fingers)
the bags of frozen camel chunks which
will not pass through
the eye of the icy needle
free in every bag of frozen peas
And, passionately, in the light of their creative fire,
they will see fresh truths
leaping like living silver fish through spray
all bread-crumbs forgotten
deep-freeze left far behind.

Sometimes, being angry is very good for kickstarting writing! Though you have to calm down to improve it later! I shall put this in the drawer for a few months now.

Greetings!

Greetings to all my writing friends of all ages! I hope to be able to share useful and inspiring bits and pieces with you all, though as one of you was 81 on his last birthday, and some of you are not yet 5, each of you may well find some things of more interest than others.



I meet you in church meeting rooms, and among ruined walls of castles and monasteries, in classrooms and in galleries and museums. I meet you all, but you will never all meet together, so this will become a place where you can learn about each other, and about what you all share - a love of writing! I hope you will also learn from each other, so that those of you who are not yet 5 may come to understand that your writing is something you can love to do until you are 81, and beyond.



So ... please watch this space. You will find news of writers I meet with and what we are all writing, suggestions for you to try out in your own writing, useful website addresses and book titles, and, I hope, inspiration. You are a member of the most amazing community! Let's all write!



How do you use your writer's notebook(s)?
and what do you do with what goes into them?


Yesterday, at Oughtibidge Junior School, Sheffield, I was discussing this with Year 3/4 writers (8 and 9 year-olds), who were having great fun gathering ideas to use in their writing later. Some had cut out images from magazines/newspapers and stuck them in for future inspiration. One had started from a photo of her mother as a baby and explored in a draft poem how much she loves her mum. Others had begun stories.

They thought about what else they might collect:

Our Writers' Notebooks/Sketchbooks/Gathering Books
What could go in here?

§ word/phrase/ sense impression
§ a mindmap or spidergram
§ image/words from the internet/books
§ a drawing or sketch
§ photo
§ map
§ note about something you remember
§ a list …
§ a cutting from a magazine
§ words from thesaurus
§ a pressed leaf or a little bit of …..?
§ anything you like that will fit and stay flat …


Here's some of my notebooking - the result of collaboration with my partner who is a visual artist, exploring digital images:

















And here are two of the resulting poem drafts:

I
the
many-
eyed ob
serving all
see her blind-
ness veiled with
root rootlet root-hair
warp and weft of barbules’
under-water iridescent only light
as hammer blows echo and the last
stone puzzle-piece perfects the dark



here

she lies
veiled and shrouded

in rough weave of root

rootlet root hair - she who

clothed emperors in sculptured silk

stitched with barbules under-sea blue sea green
flickering lamp at one hand moonlight at her back
she wove her tiny luminescent paths through the night

***********************

Why not find another artist to collaborate with?
Or try using your words in combination with another of your own art forms?