Writing from the first NWP residential at Belsey Bridge, 23 - 25 Oct 2016
These pages record some of the writing and images from the first NWP (UK) residential - three days of teachers writing and reflecting together. The writing that follows was produced during - or just after - the time spent at Belsey Bridge conference centre in Suffolk.
The blogs posted were by
- Simon Wrigley, 29.10.2016: First NWP residential: Belsey Bridge 23-25 October 2016
- Jemma Rigby, 29.10.2016: Belsey Bridge: Journeying through a landscape of writing
- Alison Jermak, 1.11.2016: How can we get our students to be original in their writing
- John Hodgson, 2.11.2016: Writing in the dark
- Theresa Gooda, 4.11.2016: Finding and shaping poetry
- Marjory Caine, 5.11.2016: The black dog of Bungay
- Janet Ward, 7.11.2016: A living, breathing space
- Jeni Smith, 11.11.2016: Writing Together ...
1. (29.10.2016) First NWP residential: Belsey Bridge 23-25 October 2016
The first NWP (UK) residential gathered 18 teachers from 6 different NWP groups. The collected expertise and experience from Primary, Secondary and Tertiary education was impressive. As with the book, this Suffolk conference was a significant marker of progress: what has been and can be achieved over 7 years by autonomous, professional practice and reflection, freely undertaken in writing groups and in UK classrooms. We created this opportunity to write together, to explore our writing and teaching processes, and to map out possible pathways for the future.
We began - as we always do - with our own writing – choosing our currently-favoured words. And they poured out:
monochrome, vendetta, smirk, happenstance, squelch, rumpus, freckle, pickle, coral, dangle, jigsaw, plosives, tagine, suede, couscouscous (sic), punctuate, alveoli, gloaming, red, create, collapse, cosy, heritage, Beccles, cobbled, victory, ascertain, pumpkin, Borriobhoola-gha ...
A key NWP principle is that writing should be voiced – ‘words on the air’. Sadly, in classrooms, writing is too often seen and not heard. The consequence is undue attention to visible secretarial skills and the neglect - even discouragement and suppression - of a writer’s voice, drive and gist. Over time, the writer’s self withers, the creative spark dies under duress of conformity to convention. The resultant writing lacks energy, is flattened by obedience and is lacklustre in effect. It no longer glistens with verve and individuality.
Rather, we need to hear and enjoy the speaker’s ‘attack’ on the word, the tone, the inflections, the rhythms, the accidental riffs - that trochaic sequence of ‘freckle’, ‘pickle’, ‘coral’, ‘dangle’ – and imagine how we might ‘create’ the ‘collapse’ of a ‘cosy’ ‘heritage’? How else to teach poetry, or the effects of grammar and syntax? How else to develop a love of vocabulary but by letting the words roll around the mouth and bounce across the room? How else to develop agency but by noting the effects of experiment and the power of authenticity?
We followed ‘words’ with individual, unshared free-writing for 5 minutes. Another key principle of NWP is that some writing should not be shared until ready. How else to develop trust and confidence? How else to understand the benefits of uninhibited play? How else to discover what it is that one really wanted to say, to confront one’s own demons, to write the impossible with bravura and elan? How else – I might add – to rinse off the grime of obligation, to restore oneself to oneself, and to rediscover a jouissance about this one ‘affordance’ of language which might have excited us into teaching in the first place?
Then, in response to prompts, we wrote reflectively about where we had got to with our own writing – our purposes, processes and products – and our own teaching of writing. Another key principle of NWP is that we reflect regularly on our own writing and teaching ‘journeys’ - and gather evidence.
So it was by this route, that we came on the first evening to our readings: Goldberg, Elbow, Cowan. We explored what each had said about the ‘affordances’ of free-writing – what it was, what it enabled, when it might be usefully employed and to what effect. Another key principle of NWP is that we read around our subject. We learn from James Britton, Janet Emig, David Morley, Anne Enright, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Andrew Motion, Ursula le Guin, PD James, Neil Gaiman, Myra Barrs, Valerie Cork. We are not the first to be making these discoveries, but we make them freshly in new contexts, testing and reinforcing our understandings with regular practice. We discover new ‘affordances’ of writing, as our personal and professional situations call for them. Our job is to answer that calling.
On the following days we wrote and read more - found poems, cinquains, landscapes. We scavenged, we jigsawed, we became typewriters - and we considered the writing progress of our children and students – how they used writing to play, to work, to catch ideas and see themselves as learners how they used writing to explore ideas before reading how they used writing to develop confidence in flow how they gained from playing with ‘structures’ how their attitudes to writing changed by being given greater freedom and responsibility how they benefited from listening and responding to each other’s writing how they benefited from having a teacher who wrote alongside them and wrote herself
But don’t take my word for it. The next few blogs will be authored by the delegates themselves.
If you find their words inspiring, please look out for future conferences – there’ll be another NWP residential next October. In the meantime, Jeni and I will be speaking about NWP at the NATE ITE symposium at the British Library on November 17th – Jeni will be at the NAWE conference in Stratford (11-13 Nov), and we will be leading a free course for teachers at the Whitechapel Gallery on 17 June 2017.
Practising what you teach is not an indulgence; it is a proper professional thing to do. Art teachers do it. Music teachers do it. Dance and drama teachers do it. Many teachers do it – and feel the better for it. Of course it takes time – and it’s hard to do on your own - but it’s motivating and restorative to do it in a trusted group which meets once a term or so. As a teacher, you can join an NWP writing group today –– and it’s free! Just click here.
Simon Wrigley
NWP outreach director
2. Belsey Bridge: Journeying through a landscape of writing 29/10/2016
This blog is the first of a series by delegates who attended the NWP residential, 23-25 October at Belsey Bridge, Suffolk. This one is by Jemma Rigby of NWP Sussex.
I was honoured enough to be part of the NWP’s first residential course to Belsey Bridge in Suffolk. The fresh countryside, panoramic landscape and autumnal colours provided the perfect retreat for a break from the hubbub of school during the half term holidays. Being given the opportunity to reflect upon our own writing and teaching practice of writing in the classroom in the first term of the new academic year was certainly food for thought and provided some principles to bear in mind for the remainder of the year.
We began with afternoon tea and words which came to us in the moment. Words such as ‘open, outreaching, cosy and gleaming’ which defined the horizon of writing lying before us.
Many opportunities for free-writing gave us the space to explore our own thoughts and ideas in what Peter Elbow would describe as ‘unfocused exploring’ and the permission to pursue it [a thought] ‘in an uncontrolled way wherever it wants to go.’ Through this the creative juices had begun to flow and time was taken to reflect upon our writing experiences and processes.
Thematically we explored landscapes through a variety of poetic responses included a collaborative found poem using books and leaflets about the geographic landscape that surrounded us. I am beginning to create my own collection for Sussex to use in the classroom already!
Another activity involved choosing one postcard from a vast range to create a cinquain (lines of 2, 4, 6, 8, 2 syllables) creating a snapshot in words. The rhythmic quality of the cinquain is effective and will certainly be something again that I take into the classroom.
Seagulls
Glimpse fish beneath
Reflected in the sea.
The fishing boat comes home to rest;
Tea time.
Our final poetic explorations used the inspiration of other writers drawing upon the interdependency of reading and writing. We took Ursula Le Guin’s poem from ‘Steering the Craft’ to influence an exploration of sound and ‘Near Hunstanton’ by Michael Hofmann to use a repetitive structure and starting sentences to create a poem of our own.
Through these landscapes we took inspiration for our own writing as well as tracing the paths of our writing journeys and experiences. As I wrote in reflection during the residential:
‘I had overlooked that teachers of reading do largely read in their own time but as teachers also of writing we don’t write. It is rare and infrequent. And with exploring my own writing, with this at the heart of what NWP do, I rekindled a love for it. I enjoyed the freedom and escape that it gave me and sometimes I wrote something that may be of some value. So let your palette knife, your pencil, your pen and your mind run a little more freely and don’t be afraid to leave an impression of yourself strewn across the page. Make your voice heard.’
As the half term holidays draw to a close we are ready to build upon the landscape of writing we have already begun to lay in our classrooms and continue to find the space in our own lives to let our own pens explore this landscape further.
Many thanks to Jeni and Simon for created such a wonderful experience for us all during the October half term.
Jemma Rigby
NWP Sussex
3. How can we get our students to be original in their writing? 1/11/2016
This blog is the second in a series by delegates who attended the NWP residential, 23-25 October 2016, at Belsey Bridge, Suffolk. This one is by Alison Jermak of the London NWP group, Whodunit.
There's an option in the AQA Literature paper for students to rewrite in response to a text. I announced this to them excitedly: it's a chance for your voices to be heard. And their response? 'It's too risky' (from a beautiful prose writer) and 'I'm not good at this'.
Here are the safe, familiar, authoritative terms that I suspect that I am not alone in offering to them lesson after lesson: lesson objectives, assessment objectives, feedback to improve essay responses etc. None of these are stimulating words to me, and yet reading a great piece of original writing makes fireworks go off in your brain.
Some of my students have a dream to be writers. And I had that dream too. Fourteen years ago, in between the dole and my second real job, I wrote a novel, sent it to publishers - no, no, no, and now it's in a padded envelope in our dark, damp garage.
Going to the NWP writing group in April 2016 changed the relationship that I had with my own writing. We did some free writing together and I wrote about my Grandad. I shared it with the group, reading too fast, my hands shaking. Someone told me that I wrote poetry. And I never knew that.
Then I thought, if I'm a poet, I should write a bit more. So I did, everyday. Six months later I get the opportunity to work with an English teacher and prose writer on the NWP writing retreat. And I thought: prose, can I? Only turns out that I can, and I'm starting to push my own writing boundaries.
Writing with the NWP, I'm rediscovering English as a creative art, and myself as a writer. By sharing this approach with staff and students in my school, we have a small community of writers who are only starting to reveal their magic. Now that is exciting.
Alison Jermak
NWP Whodunit
4. Writing in the dark 2/11/2016
This blog is the third in a series by delegates who attended the NWP residential, 23-25 October 2016, at Belsey Bridge, Suffolk. This one is by John Hodgson of the Bristol NWP group.
A short piece of writing
from the NWP weekend at Bungay in Suffolk – on the theme 'What I really want to say':
What I really want to say is that I very much appreciate the open space of writing and reflection in which I am not expected to emulate a model or reach a standard. It is strangely empowering and freeing, this space of open writing where I can let my fingers move over the keyboard, pressing keys where they will, without knowing more than three or four words ahead what is going to emerge. For example, I have just inserted a full stop and started again. Who knows who I will be in the morning, after the experience of formless non-egoistic embryonic emergence of words and ideas?
Writing in the Dark
One of my favourite poems has always been 'Traveling through the Dark', by the American poet William Stafford. I read it first in one of the Touchstones school anthologies.
Traveling through the Dark
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River Road.
It is usually best to throw them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason -
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking-lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could feel the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all – my only swerving -
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
I wrote this poem out without looking it up as it has been with me for years, a 'touchstone' in my mind, to use a term invoked more than a century ago by Matthew Arnold and later by Michael and Peter Benton in their anthologies. Only recently, through a chance listening to a radio programme, have I learned about Stafford's writing process. In an essay entitledA Way of Writing, he explains that he usually begins writing in the morning, before anyone else in the house is up, and that he relies entirely on an inner process:
"I get pen and paper, take a glance out of the window (often it is dark out there), and wait. It is like fishing. But I do not wait very long, for there is always a nibble – and this is where receptivity comes in. To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can't keep from thinking. Maybe I have to settle for an immediate impression: it's cold, or hot, or dark, or bright, or in between! Or well, the possibilities are endless. If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing come, and I'm off. If I let the process go on, things will occur to me that were not at all in my mind when I started. These things, odd or trivial as they may be, are somehow connected. And if I let them string out, surprising things will happen."
Stafford's view that the creative process will allow the emergence of things that are somehow connected is, I think, supported by a poem I wrote recently and without conscious memory of or reference to Stafford's 'Traveling in the Dark'.
Thursday Fox
A putrescent smell
led my daughter into the garden
where her four year-old plays.
A dead fox:
couched and crouching,
head on a tussock of grass
as if looking ahead.
No visible injury;
poisoned perhaps?
The jaw was eaten
and maggots festooned the tail.
Hackney council will take and dispose in an hour.
But she dug a garden grave
laid the fox as a foetus
beneath a blanket of earth
with stones above
to prevent further violation.
Who can say whether, and in what way, the 'touchstone' of Stafford's poem, which I first read fifty years ago, influenced the writing of my poem? What is clear is the emergence of a structure of feeling, in Raymond Williams' phrase, shared by Stafford, me and my daughter, which is built in words in some way we will never fully understand, despite the advances of neuroscience. And the wonder of writing is that it draws on these shared mental structures, which are normally unconscious but a powerful part of our humanity.
John Hodgson
John's website: https://johnhodgson.org/
John's blog: https://research1english.wordpress.com/
5. Finding and shaping poetry 4/11/2016
This blog is the fourth in a series by delegates who attended the NWP residential, 23-25 October 2016, at Belsey Bridge, Suffolk. This one is by Theresa Gooda, group leader for NWP Sussex (Brighton).
Visible Traces
His body passed
along the green lane
beside the church
writing with light
paying homage to the agrarian community
near exhaustion.
The family pets and horses
were buried here:
their littleness
large against that vast sky.
Fields are palimpsests,
woodlands, fen and marsh,
wet meadows, excavated pond.
Break the cauliflower head.
Leeks sprout from the curtains.
The sole of a boot,
electric all-terrain wheelchair,
almost the grim-reaper.
Silently he creeps
looming in the business of small men,
one foot firmly planted in the past.
Neglected, derelict, overgrown.
One art gives birth to another;
infinite regression.
This was our ‘found’ poem, created collaboratively using text from The East Anglians, commentary on a photographic exhibition by Justin Partyka – combined with words and phrases from a guidemap for local walks, with another line taken from a poetry recipe. I had not met my poetry-writing partner before and we knew next to nothing about each other - and so we began rather individually, by selecting the source texts independently of each other and then independently listing words and phrases that leapt out from the page. Here are some of my words:
Once we had the lists, we took turns to read our found lines aloud and found already that there were some interesting pairings (cauliflowers and leeks, for example). Images of death rose to the surface and we grouped those together. A sense of narrative was created through the idea of a funeral. Lots of lines were, of course, rejected – parchment, time as twilight, the helmeted ground-bound airman and ghostscape don’t make it anywhere in the final cut.
Next we discussed the idea of using the death of an unnamed individual as a metaphor for something significant dying within the landscape and community. We changed a pronoun, (‘it’ to ‘he’ in the ‘silently he creeps’ line) and substituted ‘in’ for ‘is’ (next to ‘looming’ in the penultimate stanza), otherwise all lines are exactly as they were ‘found’ in the two source texts, albeit integrated and reordered. We wanted ‘ghostscape’ in there somewhere as it seemed central to our shared idea, but it didn’t fit and had to go.
We considered the idea of the shape of the poem, and could clearly identify three stages to it – the funeral procession, the final resting place and the mourners themselves, so the notion of three three-verse stanzas seemed to happen quite naturally. The cauliflowers and leeks at the end of the second stanza had a ‘Stop All the Clocks’ feel – their absurdity suggesting that things were somehow wrong with the world as this individual reached his final resting place. The poem somehow didn’t seem finished, and we originally had the idea of ‘infinite regression’ buried in the final stanza. We knew that it was central to our understanding of what was going on in the narrative and metaphor of the poem, and so we made the decision to finish with that - which is how we ended up with the final two lines in a kind of coda.
We discussed punctuation repeatedly – particularly in relation to full stops. This was probably the most difficult part of the process in terms of trying to shape ideas that were both coherent and allusive. I think there is more work to be done there!
We both knew when it was ‘finished’ – and sat back with a contented sigh! This was a powerful exercise, and one which then reverberated and echoed around the next few pieces of writing that I did. These next two pieces, for example, were intended to be cinquains (but failed, dramatically) and although they are actually based around a postcard image of Framlingham Castle reflected in a moat, overtones of the language and the ideas from the found poetry exercise are clearly present within them.
Castle moat
reflects form and light.
Robust walls are shimmering,
ethereal entities.
Rupturing battlements reach
across the twilight of time:
Fortification breached.
True reflection?
Mirror image, captured moment.
Ethereal preservation,
aesthetic enhancement,
triumphant redaction.
Unorthodox palimpsests
reveal and conceal in equal measure:
Infinite regression.
Castle moat seems to be exploring something about time and history provoked by the reflected image. True Reflection emerged from Castle Moat because the first photograph reminded me of a second – a retouched wedding photograph that also contains a reflected image and has always bothered me – but that notion of ‘infinite regression’ returned to haunt me…
T Gooda
6. The Black Dog of Bungay 5/11/2016
This blog is the fifth in a series by delegates who attended the NWP residential, 23-25 October 2016, at Belsey Bridge, Suffolk. This one is by Marjory Caine, a member of NWP Whodunit (London).
I had no concerns about the writing residential – I knew that Jeni and Simon would make us welcome and entertain us with exciting writing journeys. I knew that the others from the Whodunit group had been looking forward to the residential as much as I had been – and now it was happening! Several days to write together rather than a cramped few hours once a term.
It was fun playing at spot the other teacher writers from other groups – I got that wrong when I mistook John Hodgson for the concierge and could not understand why he was so hopeless at locating my key and room. I’d arrived late due to google maps losing connection – Jeni said it was the depths of Suffolk, but I later decided it was due to Black Dog.
The experience of finding a new place for me is always tinged with adrenaline – what will I find when I get there? A landscape new to me – flat and uninteresting? Instead I found medlars – an avenue of medieval medlars leading to a 1920s building that had a warren of rooms and additions. On the way I passed a field full of treasure seekers searching for the next Sutton Hoo burial or Hoxne hoard, not with archaeological trowels but metal detectors that whirred and beeped across the dreels. They were swarming around St Mary’s Church situated on a rise (a hill to local Suffolk people) where the road I travelled along acted as a border between the living of the congregation and the dead of the graveyard. And the church was a beautiful example of the flint decorated building with regular tower topped off with pinnacles. And there was a black dog that rampaged through the countryside and scarred church doors with claws of fire – St Mary’s of Bungay not this St Mary’s of Ditchingham – but I didn’t meet the dog until I sat down to the shared writing sessions.
And that’s where I found the story of the Black Dog of Bungay – overheard from a shared writing exercise across the table from my pair. It sounded exciting and magpie like, I collected details.
Jeni had introduced us to morning pages – write for 20 minutes as soon as you wake up – and of course that’s where I met the Black Dog face to jowl, at 5.30 in the morning in Hughes’ hour-before-dawn-dark:
They flee from us these thoughts at the liminal, between sleeping and waking. They wander out of sight to what is now. I remember waking, waking while it was dark dark inside my room here. There was an oppression in the room. I knew it was there but I did not put on the light. I moved around the room. I knew it had come in the window slithered over the sill embedded itself in the space of this room this small room. I could feel it coming fro me. I managed to open the door although it was there around me. I went into the corridor – others were coming out of their rooms with their own black dogs after them. Because that was what it was – my black dog – not Churchill’s – but mine.
I’ve transcribed the morning pages above as I wrote them to try and capture the excitement of my writing experience. My thoughts flew ahead of punctuation and cares – well, the black dog was there too. And I found not only a terrific story but an experiential writing that I want my students to have the space, the opportunity to try out. I want them to have the confidence to experiment with their writing and to enjoy writing. Not just morning pages, but I’ve collected many other ideas for engaging and energising the writers in my classes – some from Jeni and Simon and some from the other teacher writers. And that’s the wonderful part of finding my way to the residential – I’m part of a writing group that just also happens to be a group of teachers.
Marjory Caine
7. A living, breathing space 7/11/2016
This blog is the sixth in a series by delegates who attended the NWP residential, 23-25 October 2016, at Belsey Bridge, Suffolk. This one is by Janet Ward, a member of NWP Whodunit (London).
Working with teachers as writers at any venue gives space, time and voice in a supportive writing community and Belsey Bridge was no exception. From the richness in the ritual first striking of words where this time 'vendetta' met 'meander', 'palpitations' and 'pitted landscapes' rubbed shoulders with 'bloodshot' and 'wrath', each word still turns in the mouth and the mind.
Then there was opportunity to experience different writing activities from free writing based on travelling through found poems, scavenger hunts, and literary stimuli - each offering ways to explore and tap the nebulous creative mind.
These processes are welcome additions to my repertoire for teaching with the invaluable element of personal experience. Creating poems and being encouraged to shape responses alongside listening to others, takes the activities far beyond textbook advice into a living, breathing space.
Janet Ward
8. Writing Together… 11/11/2016
This blog is by co-director, Jeni Smith
…was the title Simon and I gave to the first workshop we ran together at the NATE conference. I still remember writing shared amongst that group, the metaphors for writing that made us weep with laughter: ‘It occurs to me that writing is, in many ways, like a Six Way Party Moustache….’; an exposition on a plastic parrot’s beak dangling from elastic; an airing cupboard; origins; openings; a calendar of grief, quietly spoken.
The silence of a room of one’s own is a treasure. I write this, sitting in a quiet hotel room with a view of sunshine on beaded grass. However, the experience of writing together afforded by teachers’ writing groups is rich and joyous. Our three days at Belsey Bridge gave us rooms of our own. It gave us, also, room to be together in and around writing in ways that are mind-expanding; life-affirming.
Looking back over other people’s reflections, I see how the ‘living breathing space’ of a community of teacher writers reverberates far beyond any outline plan, however carefully imagined. From the very first activity, the words of individuals tap against each other; a circle of surprise and resonance. The circle is one of trust, appreciation, learning. Writers begin, alone, jotting down the words that come to them. Once shared, the words take on another life. And conversation follows: we discover words in Polish and Gujerati, the pleasure of an alliterative run, the stories that lie behind this word or that, the place names and brand names, the words that have a personal meaning and which resonate for others: Marmite, Luton, barm cake. We are spurred by the audacity and adventure of others; recognise the power of simplicity and the exhilaration of invention. These elements run through any teachers’ writing group, so that as writers and teachers we find the conditions for growth.
The company of writing teachers gathered at Belsey wrote alone and together. We heard our own and each other’s writing voiced. As we read, we experienced the hush, the laughter, the intake of breath, that our writing provoked. We heard that important word, ‘thank you’, in response to what we had written. Through sharing our thinking about writing, and through writing together, we brought out into the open some of the strategies we use when we are writing alone. We expanded our repertoire. We took risks. We thought, together, about the ways in which our past experiences, our reading, our talk, inform our writing and our approaches to writing. The poet learned from the novelist; strangers negotiated word choices, wrangled over punctuation, sat back with a satisfied sigh; the legendary Black Dog ran through Suffolk lanes and into our poetry and prose.
The trusted audience, the shared enterprise, a generosity and openness towards the other and towards writing itself: these are conditions of a teachers’ writing group and they are nurtured there. At Belsey, we had the additional luxury of time. At Belsey, we saw that time is not so much a luxury as essential for personal and professional growth. The space for oneself in the company of others makes possible thinking, invention and resolve. It allows for the exchange of ideas and ways of being and the safe space first to try these out and then to see how one might take them forward.
Looking back, over the last seven blogs, seven very small fragments of the whole, I am struck by the richness and complexity of writing - and of writing within a group. Writing can, like Heineken, reach those parts … It can make a difference to how we feel - and how and what we think. We learn, deeply, about and from others. Writing together has the potential to help us inhabit a rich and nuanced understanding of writing itself; and of the part that writing can play in our lives. That understanding, then, that ‘orientation’ underpins who we are and the choices we make in teaching writing. I am not denying the need for technical skill. But technical skill is only of use, only powerful, when set within this bigger understanding. And that bigger, more generous understanding, is nurtured by teachers’ writing groups.
Jeni Smith
This blog is by co-director, Jeni Smith
…was the title Simon and I gave to the first workshop we ran together at the NATE conference. I still remember writing shared amongst that group, the metaphors for writing that made us weep with laughter: ‘It occurs to me that writing is, in many ways, like a Six Way Party Moustache….’; an exposition on a plastic parrot’s beak dangling from elastic; an airing cupboard; origins; openings; a calendar of grief, quietly spoken.
The silence of a room of one’s own is a treasure. I write this, sitting in a quiet hotel room with a view of sunshine on beaded grass. However, the experience of writing together afforded by teachers’ writing groups is rich and joyous. Our three days at Belsey Bridge gave us rooms of our own. It gave us, also, room to be together in and around writing in ways that are mind-expanding; life-affirming.
Looking back over other people’s reflections, I see how the ‘living breathing space’ of a community of teacher writers reverberates far beyond any outline plan, however carefully imagined. From the very first activity, the words of individuals tap against each other; a circle of surprise and resonance. The circle is one of trust, appreciation, learning. Writers begin, alone, jotting down the words that come to them. Once shared, the words take on another life. And conversation follows: we discover words in Polish and Gujerati, the pleasure of an alliterative run, the stories that lie behind this word or that, the place names and brand names, the words that have a personal meaning and which resonate for others: Marmite, Luton, barm cake. We are spurred by the audacity and adventure of others; recognise the power of simplicity and the exhilaration of invention. These elements run through any teachers’ writing group, so that as writers and teachers we find the conditions for growth.
The company of writing teachers gathered at Belsey wrote alone and together. We heard our own and each other’s writing voiced. As we read, we experienced the hush, the laughter, the intake of breath, that our writing provoked. We heard that important word, ‘thank you’, in response to what we had written. Through sharing our thinking about writing, and through writing together, we brought out into the open some of the strategies we use when we are writing alone. We expanded our repertoire. We took risks. We thought, together, about the ways in which our past experiences, our reading, our talk, inform our writing and our approaches to writing. The poet learned from the novelist; strangers negotiated word choices, wrangled over punctuation, sat back with a satisfied sigh; the legendary Black Dog ran through Suffolk lanes and into our poetry and prose.
The trusted audience, the shared enterprise, a generosity and openness towards the other and towards writing itself: these are conditions of a teachers’ writing group and they are nurtured there. At Belsey, we had the additional luxury of time. At Belsey, we saw that time is not so much a luxury as essential for personal and professional growth. The space for oneself in the company of others makes possible thinking, invention and resolve. It allows for the exchange of ideas and ways of being and the safe space first to try these out and then to see how one might take them forward.
Looking back, over the last seven blogs, seven very small fragments of the whole, I am struck by the richness and complexity of writing - and of writing within a group. Writing can, like Heineken, reach those parts … It can make a difference to how we feel - and how and what we think. We learn, deeply, about and from others. Writing together has the potential to help us inhabit a rich and nuanced understanding of writing itself; and of the part that writing can play in our lives. That understanding, then, that ‘orientation’ underpins who we are and the choices we make in teaching writing. I am not denying the need for technical skill. But technical skill is only of use, only powerful, when set within this bigger understanding. And that bigger, more generous understanding, is nurtured by teachers’ writing groups.
Jeni Smith