May 31 Poem – 2015-05-31, 6.18 PM

This is a recording of one of the poems I wrote during Sunday’s workshop. The reference to a “pain slicked” path comes from Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s poem “Wild Geese,” which was my prompt for this poem.

Our first prompt was “Intersections” since each of our projects have something to do with community or isolation.

This is my (first draft) response to the prompt:

Grief challenges my skepticism
Soft hope at the [...]]]> We’re two weeks into this new Patchwork, and everyone’s projects are starting to take shape. It’s amazing to watch.

Our first prompt was “Intersections” since each of our projects have something to do with community or isolation.

This is my (first draft) response to the prompt:

Grief challenges my skepticism
Soft hope at the edges
Fate and faith and fear
And I think, there must be a loom
There must be a weaver
I must be a thread
There must be a point
A picture
A pattern
A purpose
And you must be a thread
And we must intersect
Again
We must
This cannot be Jackson Pollock
This cannot be random happenstance
My atoms love your atoms
Surely that means something?

But let’s say it doesn’t
There is no cave
No sisters spinning
No loom
No weaver
No pattern
And I am not a thread
And you are not a thread
And my atoms are my atoms
And yours are yours
And there is no we
There is only me
There is only you

Still, I long to intersect

The second part of the day was workshopping a previous poem, and the feedback I got on my poem was so helpful! This will be the first poem in my project, and is intended to set up the false sense of isolation and aloneness that the project hopes to explore. (The first draft of this poem was also written on a day when I was feeling particularly grief-stricken and low, so apologies for the downer but I kind of love it. Goth on the inside forever.)

The Subject is Suffering

The subject is
abandoned at the side of hope
suffering from multiple puncture wounds
and the crude surgical removal
(perhaps without anaesthetic)
of the heart and major organs.

The subject appears to be in distress
and this is distasteful
and the blood is everywhere
and the subject will not stop
with the tears and the talking,
the incessant post-mortem.

So wrap the subject in cellophane.
Shove the guts back in,
looping ropes of viscera and longing
in tangled, tidied knots.
Let the bleeding be internal,
contained.
If the subject is to be alone,
then let the subject be alone.

Finally, we each wrote on our own prompts. These prompts included “what is it about isolation that’s so freakin’ terrifying?” (mine), “flu season”, and a reflection on specific relationships.

This new format is very exciting, and productive! The original goal of the Patchwork groups was to provide a structure for sustainable writing practice, and I think we are getting there with this project. Although many of us are exploring difficult and challenging topics in our projects, the safety and support of the group is invaluable. For myself, working through some difficult emotions and struggling to restabilize myself, I am learning again the healing power of writing. It is possible to find truth and hope and self on the page, and this is a lesson that comes again and again. I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn again, and to facilitate workshops where other writers can also explore the healing power of writing.

Rather than following our usual formula of three prompts within the session, with each prompt generating a discrete piece of writing, this round will be much more focused on generating a [...]]]> After a too-long hiatus, Writing in the Margins is back! Today marked the return of Patchwork Poetics, with a new approach for this round.

Rather than following our usual formula of three prompts within the session, with each prompt generating a discrete piece of writing, this round will be much more focused on generating a cohesive body of work which we will then turn into chapbooks or a performance. It’s ambitious, and exciting! (And there are still a couple spots left, if you would like to sign up!)

Our structure for this round will be one facilitator-provided prompt (that’s me, the facilitator!), time to review and offer feedback on each other’s revised work (which we will be emailing to the group during the week and then discussing at the group), and one writer-generated prompt related to their specific project. Today we sketched out our projects, talked about how they might work together (amazingly well, it turns out), and wrote on two prompts.

First, I want to brag about these projects. They will range from the self-consciously falsely individualistic (that’s mine! Set up false walls and explore within them, pretend this island isn’t connected to the ocean floor and see what comes of it, explore the me that stops at my skin), to the gloriously communal (exploring the collectivity and contagiousness of pain, each of us in a shared ocean of pain), to navigating the boundaries of individual and communal, self and society (looking particularly at destabilizing the comfortable upward trajectory of ambition and career, and exploring vulnerable creative space). It’s going to be amazing.

The first prompt we wrote on is an Annie Dillard quote, taken from Sage Cohen’s book Writing the Life Poetic, in the section titled “Spending More Than You Save.”

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now… Something more will arise later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. – Annie Dillard

We wrote about, and talked about, the risks we associate with “spending” our creativity and our emotional energy. Turns out, it’s pretty frickin’ scary to actually put our words and our hearts out into the world. That’s why we’re doing it together!

Our second prompt was Andrea Gibson’s beautiful, generous poem “A Letter To The Playground Bully, From Andrea (age 8).”

As always, the safety of the space within these workshops allowed for some beautiful, cathartic, generous (and sometimes ranting!) poems to be written and shared. I feel honoured to be working with a Patchwork group again, and excited about where this new format will take us. Keep your eyes on this space for weekly updates, and watch for a performance to be announced sometime in the next couple months!

Are there any workshops that you’re particularly interested in attending? Comment or send me an email at tiffany@writinginthemargins.ca and let me know! I’m scheduling the summer programming now and am excited to get back into it.

For anyone writing alongside at home, or considering registering [...]]]> For the first time, Patchwork will be focusing on poetry writing. Last session’s focus on fiction was a success and each of the participants generated some fantastic work – science fiction, magic realism, fantasy – and I’m looking forward to this session’s focus on poetry.

For anyone writing alongside at home, or considering registering for this workshop, here is the bonus session recap that was just sent out to participants.

Happy Friday, Patchwork Poets.

You’re receiving this email because you RSVPd yes or maybe to the Patchwork Poetics group. If you’d prefer not to get these update emails, let me know!

This will be a long email, and it’s in two sections so skip ahead or budget your time as required. You’ll find an introduction to Patchwork and how the group works (which will be expanded on at our first meeting on August 3), and three prompts for your own writing at home.

First, an intro to Patchwork.

I’m Tiffany, and I’ll be facilitating our group. I’ve been facilitating writing workshops for over four years, and I love this work. I’m available throughout the course to read and offer feedback on your partial or completed writing pieces, and I’ll be sending a recap email after each session as well as sending writing prompts throughout the week. You are never expected or obligated to share your work either with me or with the group, and how (and whether) you respond to the writing prompts is totally up to you.

If you do share your just-written work with the group or with me, we will respond only with what works or is effective in the piece. Your willingness to take a risk and share will never be met with harsh critiques or challenging questions. If you want to share polished work and receive a mix of positive response and constructive, compassionate critique, that is also an option available to anyone in the group.

If you do want to share your work with me or with the group, you can send it by email or read it at our in-person sessions. If you email a piece to the group or to me, let us know if it is a just-written response to a writing prompt, or if you are looking for critique.

Patchwork, like all Writing in the Margins workshops, is based on Pat Schneider’s Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) method. That means that we have a few guidelines in place that will be part of each session, and part of our interactions outside of the sessions.

You can learn more about how the workshops are run at Pat Schneider’s website or in her book, which you’re welcome to borrow from me, and these are the basic guidelines (from the website):

Unique to the AWA method… are these two revolutionary practices:
• Everything in the writing workshop is treated as fiction, to minimize the personal vulnerability of the writer, and
• The teacher or leader writes with the students or participants, and reads aloud along with the other writers.
These practices, along with keeping all writing confidential, responding to just-written work with encouragement rather than negative critique, create an environment that is non-hierarchical, honest, and safe. Accomplished and beginning writers learn from one another in a generous atmosphere of both critical craft and personal respect for the value of every voice.

My commitment to you is that I will respect these guidelines, and will make sure that they are respected within the workshop space. In addition, if there are other considerations that would help make the Patchwork space feel safer and more welcoming to you, please let me know! The goal of the group is to support and encourage your unique creative voice, and that’s only possible if you feel safe. It is my job to create that space for you as much as possible.

Second, the prompts!

We had a bonus meeting on Sunday, for those folks who were able to attend the original start date. Although we won’t be officially starting until August 3, I wanted to share with you the prompt that we discussed (at lovely, luxurious length!) a few days ago. This prompt lends itself most obviously to prose writing, but I think it could easily become a poem. We will be focusing on poetry in this round of Patchwork, and our prompts will mainly be poetry prompts, but as always all genres and all voices and all writing styles are welcome.

The prompt is modified from one of Priscilla Uppal’s contributions to the book “The Writer’s Gym,” and has to do with myths, fables, fairytales and family stories. Priscilla writes about a love of myth in her youth, a love that I can certainly relate to. The prompt, in its original form, is to interview a family member (or multiple family members) for their stories, and then to retell those stories with an emphasis on how they might map onto existing tropes of fairytale, fable, myth and archetype.

We obviously didn’t bring our family members to the workshop, so the modified prompt was to take an existing story (either from our own lives or families, or from our existing fictional writing) and to retell that story with an emphasis on mythological elements.

But even this, theoretically much easier, quicker prompt, was too much! We agreed, each of us there, that we needed to do more research, find more fairytales, more fables, more myths, more archetypes. As part of my own research, I’m rereading Neil Gaiman’s fantastic book, American Gods. I’m also digging through my memories of family stories, and looking to the mythologies of my various cultures (I’m Norwegian, Scottish, British and settler Canadian).

So, my dear poets, if this prompt speaks to you then take your notebook, your laptop, your voice recorder or just your ears and go out searching for stories. Expand the definition of family to include your chosen family, or yourself. Find stories, sit with them, hold them up against existing mythological stories, and find a fit. Then stitch them together!

I will be interviewing my dad. The man who raised him, a cook in their home in Nigeria, died last week. Issues of religious imperialism (my grandparents were missionaries), colonialism, classism and privilege are swirling around in my head, and I think there is definitely something deep and archetypal about those kinds of conflicts. We’ll see what comes of it!

And now, two new prompts:

The first comes from a workshop that I attended at the Canadian Creative Writer’s Conference in Vancouver earlier this year. I was at a brilliant panel that included a discussion of list poems, and I was enchanted by the speaker’s enthusiasm for this (often maligned) form. So, write a list poem. Think about how a list can be a window into a world, and how all the context that goes unspoken around the list – the negative space of the poem – creates a poetic form that is deceptively simple. Here is a list poem taken from a story in my family’s history.

Escape/Abandonment

Empty house
Pot roast thawing
Note
“Please cook the roast. I’m sorry.”

And finally, a prompt taken from Mary Oliver’s book “A Poetry Handbook” –

She writes, “The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem – the heat of a star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say – exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious. It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It wait, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself – soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.

Why should it? It can wait. It can stay silent a lifetime. Who knows anyway what it is, that wild skily part of ourselves without which no poem can live? But we do know this: if it is going to enter into a passionate relationship and speak what is in its own portion of your mind, the other responsible and purposeful part of you had better be a Romeo. It doesn’t matter if risk is somewhere close by – risk is always hovering somewhere. But it won’t involve itself with anything less than perfect seriousness.

For the would-be writer of poems, this is the first and most essential thing to understand. It comes before everything, even technique.”

Your prompt is to sit with Mary Oliver’s admonition to be a Romeo to your poetic heat, and write down the responses that rise up in you. Maybe you are excited by this prospective romance – write that. Maybe you are afraid, of failure, of judgment, of rejection, of a new genre, of the blank page – write that. Maybe you are angry at the suggestion that reliability is essential, and maybe you are chronically ill or overworked or exhausted and you only have scraps of time to begin with – write that. Maybe it feels welcoming, maybe it feels exclusive, maybe it feels open, maybe it feels closed. Write all that down. Pour out the emotional response to what the author says is the most essential thing, and then if you feel inspired to do so, push those words around until they form a poem.

Personally, I believe that Mary Oliver is right that we must romance our creativity and be present with it, and nurture the relationship the same as we must nurture any other relationship, *but* I also believe that we do the best we can with the resources that we have available, and that our creative hearts recognize effort and intention. If you don’t show up at the desk between seven and nine because you are laying in bed in pain, the heat of your poetic heart will not retreat or die out. You can be a poet and be ill, neurodivergent, differently abled, overworked, exhausted, anxious, afraid of failure. You can be a poet even if you only make it to the desk once a month. You can be a poet even if you never write outside of these workshops.

I wish that I could wave my magic wand and grant you each time and energy to invest in your poetry writing with the rigour and commitment that every single how-to book demands, but I can’t. We live in a toxic capitalist culture that shames us for any deviation from the norm, that looks down on creative expression in the first place and *especially* creative expression coming from the margins. As much as possible, Patchwork is kept separate from those harmful messages. You are welcome here, no matter how much time you’re able to commit to this work. The goal is to help you develop a sustainable writing practice, and one that feels safe, welcoming, supportive and expansive. The more you can show up at the page, the better. But there’s no minimum required for participation, and you will never have to explain yourself to me or to this group. Be a poet. Be a writer. You already are! I’m excited to spend time with you, exploring our poetry together.

I’ll see you all on August 3 at 1:30 at the Calgary Sexual Health Centre, and I’ll send another prompt or two between now and then.

Happy writing!

– Tiffany

A Friday prompt for you, before our meeting on Sunday. (And Sunday will be fun – I have a new prompt generator for us!)

So, make yourself a cup of tea or something else hydrating and delicious. Take a deep breath. Stretch your back, your neck, your shoulders [...]]]> Good afternoon, Patchworkers, and writers at home!

A Friday prompt for you, before our meeting on Sunday. (And Sunday will be fun – I have a new prompt generator for us!)

So, make yourself a cup of tea or something else hydrating and delicious. Take a deep breath. Stretch your back, your neck, your shoulders and your wrists. Let yourself sink into your fictional world, and wander around for a bit before you start writing. Now, set your timer for 15 or 20 minutes and take a character into a part of your world that you haven’t explored before, and that they haven’t explored before. Maybe they’re visiting someone new, maybe they’re lost, maybe they’ve just started a new job or discovered a new market. See what happens!

Don’t forget that we will also have the opportunity to share our 1000-word stories on Sunday. If you’re writing at home, feel free to share your story by email, or in a comment.

And a bonus, the poem that was sent out to the Finding Water group for this week. The poet is Jillian Christmas, and I saw her perform at the literary cabaret in Vancouver. She’s fantastic!