All things shall pass...

This is just to say

I have marked
your portfolios
that were in
my postbox

and which
you were probably
anxious
to hear about

Forgive me
they were delicious
so accomplished
and so cool


In prose: all who have handed in have received a pass grade. If you would like your comments, you have a choice between e-mailing me and asking for them, or coming to see me at my office, for instance on Wednesday between 1 and 2 p.m.

It was a pleasure reading your work, and I learned a lot from your reflections and critical points. Thanks!

Writing game week 6

Wednesday we will be working with parody/pastiche, and our text will be Henry Reed's poem "Naming of Parts" from his sequence Lessons of the War (1942). Clicking the link above will take you to the text. Note that there are 6 parts in the sequence and it will make the task easier if you read them all, although we will focus on interventions into part one...

Bruce Chatwin's piece of travel writing: The Chinese Geomancer

For those of you who prefer to read the Chatwin text online, here is the link:

The Chinese Geomancer

The story appeared in Chatwins book What Am I Doing Here?

In anticipation of Writing Game 4

For next week's home writing game/exercise, you need to pick a genre to write within, so look at the slides for sessions 3 and 4, and try to think of what is specific for each genre in terms of form and function - in other words: what reading protocol or contract a specific genre presupposes between writer and readership.

Then the task is to remediate and/or rewrite one of the four texts you have read for today:

1. Tom Wolfe's example of New Journalism: excerpt from The Right Stuff - click the link to download...

2. A.S. Byatt's 'review' of the Harry Potter phenomenon - this text from The New York Times runs over two pages - don't forget to read the last page too!

3. The blog post from 3QuarksDaily on sex and the religious right - click the link to download

4. - or finally the Hemingway short story Hills Like White Elephants - which you have to copy from the master shelf...

Illustration above: Douglas Adams' typewriter....

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

Below are the dudes and dudettes whose texts you can choose between for your genre-specific re-write:



A.S. Byatt - all bundled up...



Hemingway - passport, 1921...



Tom Wolfe - dandyfied



Dagmar Herzog - history professor, City University of New York...

Click the links to learn more about the person whose text you will be fiddling with!

Session 3

Your reading for session 3 of the Creative Writing course features a chapter from Micheline Wandor's book, The Author is not Dead, Merely Somewhere Else: Creative Writing Reconceived... This book is a history of the discipline of creative writing itself - mainly an American phenomenon - seen from a British perspective.

Wandor is an accomplished writer herself as you can see by browsing this site from The British Council. Apart from being a play-wright performed by the most prestigious theatres in the UK, and a poet, she is also a performing classical musician - and as you can see from many of her titles, the relationship between music and language is very important to her. In fact, if you click into her own web site you can hear her play the flute...

Enjoy your reading for Wednesday!

My Last Duchess - Update

The powerpoint slides for last week's session are now in the Course Data-Base - sorry for the delay!

Posts intervening into Browning's dramatic monologue have begun to trickle in - keep them coming, please...

Here, b.t.w., is the David Olney reading of the poem, from YouTube:

Robert Browning: My Last Duchess

The text of Robert Browning's dramatic monologue can be found here...

Here are some re-mediations of the poem:

A full dramatization...

A theatrical reading...

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

Here is the Wordle site, if you want to try this way of visualizing and randomizing texts...

Invitations to authors

The first batch of invitations to become authors on the Creative Writing blog has now been sent out. Lots of students have not yet sent me their e-mail addresses, so those people have of course not yet been invited...

In the meantime I hope you have had or are having fun with your first home-finished writing game and are dying to post your striking phrase (found when reading backwards through your free writing) - and the text this phrase inspired you to compose!

In other news, the powerpoint slides for the first session have now been added through the course database. You can access them there to recap the teaching points, the instructions for the writing game, and the homework for session 2.

And one more step...

You will notice that the blog list on the right hand side of the blog screen contains a certain bias towards the interests that I have, as a person and a teacher.

The blog-roll, however is open for submissions. If there is a site that you would like to have added, just send me an e-mail containing its URL, and I'll put the link up.

Remember that all writing and blogging/social networking is a form of identity-work. We learn about you from knowing what you like, what you read and what you write. Share your roll, folks.

PS: the image on your right hand contains irony. Use sparingly and with extreme care...

Next Step

Get author's rights to this blog and start posting your work!

Send me an e-mail at the following address: i12bent@hum.aau.dk

Your mail should contain your own preferred e-mail address and your name. I'll then add you to the list of people with author's rights. You should create a profile at Blogger, if you don't already have one. In there you can create a narrative about yourself and thus start performing life-writing.

I also recommend subscribing to the blog feed so that you automatically receive all updates/new posts.

Welcome

Dear students,

Welcome to your friendly blog environment for the class in Creative Writing here at Aalborg University. You can already start out by checking our suggested blog friends in the blog roll on your right hand screen. These are blogs that either are written by people in the Department, or are of extreme quality and interest - OR BOTH!

You can also begin exploring your first reading from David Morley's book The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing for next Tuesday's class... All you have to do is copy the relevant chapter from the course master - found, of course, on the course shelf.

That book, btw., can also be accessed at GoogleBooks here if you prefer an electronic copy.

Morley, of course, is also a blogger so explore his more creative and personal writing here...

Look also at his favourite blogs where you can get a glimpse into other classes' teaching blogs.

His poet's web site is here, and is also well worth investigating...

Anyway, I look forward to seeing you again next Tuesday, where hopefully you'll once more show up with open minds and in a writing mood...