Chained texts
This page extends 'Collaborative ideas - number 4'. Click here for the link.
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Everything is connected. Twahamwe = we are together, we are one.
This seems particularly pertinent in broken times when we seem out of step with each other, our natures, and even our home and natural world (see example 5 below - a text created by an NWP group in May 2019)
'Chained' texts are simply patterned, interlocking 'links' constructed separately and then experienced together as one 'chain'. (good for writing groups)
Example 1: the alphabet and its order can be a way of gathering 26 different ideas on a given topic, with each of 26 writers responsible for one part. So the group might decide to investigate spring-time and each writer might be asked to create their alphabet for spring. Rhyming, rhythmic or grammatical patterns - such as question and answer - might be agreed beforehand, and writers might each opt to take responsibility for one letter. When the group was ready, the 'whole text chain' might be experienced.
Example 2: Consequential texts - like 'The House that Jack Built', can provide a way to combine different 'links' in a 'chain' of cause and consequence. Hence the reason why I am grumpy today might, eventually, be tracked back by a sequence of 'because's to some big bang or other prime cause. (cf Ray Bradbury's short story, 'The Sound of Thunder')
Example 3: Numerical texts - ascending or descending - such as 'The 12 days of Christmas' - are ways of elaborating on an idea - such as gifts to a loved one.
Example 4: Choral and participatory texts where the audience is asked to 'fill in the blanks' by suggesting another item - eg clothing in the traditional song, 'Soldier soldier, will you marry me with your musket, pipe and drum?' (Some might baulk at the gender and military connotation of this particular text - but once a chorus is established and a category anticipated, it is possible for a group to provide items to become links in a longer chain.)
This seems particularly pertinent in broken times when we seem out of step with each other, our natures, and even our home and natural world (see example 5 below - a text created by an NWP group in May 2019)
'Chained' texts are simply patterned, interlocking 'links' constructed separately and then experienced together as one 'chain'. (good for writing groups)
Example 1: the alphabet and its order can be a way of gathering 26 different ideas on a given topic, with each of 26 writers responsible for one part. So the group might decide to investigate spring-time and each writer might be asked to create their alphabet for spring. Rhyming, rhythmic or grammatical patterns - such as question and answer - might be agreed beforehand, and writers might each opt to take responsibility for one letter. When the group was ready, the 'whole text chain' might be experienced.
Example 2: Consequential texts - like 'The House that Jack Built', can provide a way to combine different 'links' in a 'chain' of cause and consequence. Hence the reason why I am grumpy today might, eventually, be tracked back by a sequence of 'because's to some big bang or other prime cause. (cf Ray Bradbury's short story, 'The Sound of Thunder')
Example 3: Numerical texts - ascending or descending - such as 'The 12 days of Christmas' - are ways of elaborating on an idea - such as gifts to a loved one.
Example 4: Choral and participatory texts where the audience is asked to 'fill in the blanks' by suggesting another item - eg clothing in the traditional song, 'Soldier soldier, will you marry me with your musket, pipe and drum?' (Some might baulk at the gender and military connotation of this particular text - but once a chorus is established and a category anticipated, it is possible for a group to provide items to become links in a longer chain.)
Example 5: A text 'retold' from the inside out. This as good a re-reading exercise as it is a re-writing exercise. It focuses on detail and considers its connection to the whole.
A text is read and the group retrieve particular words and items from it. These are then arranged in an order and each writer is given a loose formula by which they must choose an item from the list and connect it with the next. This works best where the connecting words or phrases come as near the beginning and ends of each writer's text.
On May 1 2019, in the light of recent demonstrations by Extinction Rebellion to raise awareness of climate emergency, the Bedford NWP community group read this poem written 5 years ago.
The storms of February 2014 uncovered a petrified forest and evidence of ancient habitation from the beach at Borth. *Cantre’r Gwaelod, (The Drowned Hundred), is a legendary land lost under Cardigan Bay.
Cantre’r Gwaelod by Gillian Clarke
The morning after, the beach at Borth
is a graveyard, a petrified forest
thundered out of the sand by the storm,
drowned by the sea six thousand years ago
when the Earth was flat,
the horizon the edge of the world.
Remains of stilted walkways tell their story:
how they walked over water between trees,
longing for a lost land when the sea-god stole it,
how they shouldered their children and fled
with every creature that could crawl, run, fly,
till time turned truth to myth.
It’s how it will be as world turns reflective:
seas sated with meltwater, craving more;
a cliff-fall takes a bungalow; a monstrous
tide rips up a coastal train-track;
storm fells a thousand-year-old oak,
smashes a graceful seaside promenade.
Grieve for lost wilderness - for the lovesick salmon,
lured by sweet river-water sleeved in the salt,
homing upstream to spawn at the source
where it was born; for mating hares
in love with the March wind; for thermals
lifting a flaunt of red kites over the wood;
for bees mooning for honey in weedless fields;
for sleepy Marsh Fritillary butterflies
swarming the ancient bog of Cors Llawr Cwrt;
for the Brown Hairstreak in love with blackthorn
and the honeydew of aphids in the ash;
for the blackbird’s evening aria of possession;
for Earth’s intricate engineering, unpicked
like the flesh, sinews, bones of the mother duck
crushed on the motorway, her young
bewildered in a blizzard of feathers;
the balance of things undone by money,
the indifferent hunger of the sea.
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Method
14 writers chose 14 words or phrases from the poem. These were listed on the board in numerical order.
1. Morning
2. Wilderness
3. Drowned
4. Edge of the world
5. petrified forest
6. mooning for honey
7. hunger
8. butterfly
9. children
10. monstrous tide
11. balance
12. love-sick salmon
13. feathers
14. craving
Then each writer took one word or phrase and wrote their 'section' according to this 'formula':
Collaborative writing
3 sentences:
1.I am the ….
2.(More about me)
3.My connection/ relationship with the next item on the list.
e.g.
1.I am wilderness - lost.
2.Snagged by barbed wire, I dream of water seeping through margins, of marsh unpoisoned - rife with species, of ice howling through stone.
3.I long for chaos - my source.
(Next writer: I am the source ….)
A text is read and the group retrieve particular words and items from it. These are then arranged in an order and each writer is given a loose formula by which they must choose an item from the list and connect it with the next. This works best where the connecting words or phrases come as near the beginning and ends of each writer's text.
On May 1 2019, in the light of recent demonstrations by Extinction Rebellion to raise awareness of climate emergency, the Bedford NWP community group read this poem written 5 years ago.
The storms of February 2014 uncovered a petrified forest and evidence of ancient habitation from the beach at Borth. *Cantre’r Gwaelod, (The Drowned Hundred), is a legendary land lost under Cardigan Bay.
Cantre’r Gwaelod by Gillian Clarke
The morning after, the beach at Borth
is a graveyard, a petrified forest
thundered out of the sand by the storm,
drowned by the sea six thousand years ago
when the Earth was flat,
the horizon the edge of the world.
Remains of stilted walkways tell their story:
how they walked over water between trees,
longing for a lost land when the sea-god stole it,
how they shouldered their children and fled
with every creature that could crawl, run, fly,
till time turned truth to myth.
It’s how it will be as world turns reflective:
seas sated with meltwater, craving more;
a cliff-fall takes a bungalow; a monstrous
tide rips up a coastal train-track;
storm fells a thousand-year-old oak,
smashes a graceful seaside promenade.
Grieve for lost wilderness - for the lovesick salmon,
lured by sweet river-water sleeved in the salt,
homing upstream to spawn at the source
where it was born; for mating hares
in love with the March wind; for thermals
lifting a flaunt of red kites over the wood;
for bees mooning for honey in weedless fields;
for sleepy Marsh Fritillary butterflies
swarming the ancient bog of Cors Llawr Cwrt;
for the Brown Hairstreak in love with blackthorn
and the honeydew of aphids in the ash;
for the blackbird’s evening aria of possession;
for Earth’s intricate engineering, unpicked
like the flesh, sinews, bones of the mother duck
crushed on the motorway, her young
bewildered in a blizzard of feathers;
the balance of things undone by money,
the indifferent hunger of the sea.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Method
14 writers chose 14 words or phrases from the poem. These were listed on the board in numerical order.
1. Morning
2. Wilderness
3. Drowned
4. Edge of the world
5. petrified forest
6. mooning for honey
7. hunger
8. butterfly
9. children
10. monstrous tide
11. balance
12. love-sick salmon
13. feathers
14. craving
Then each writer took one word or phrase and wrote their 'section' according to this 'formula':
Collaborative writing
3 sentences:
1.I am the ….
2.(More about me)
3.My connection/ relationship with the next item on the list.
e.g.
1.I am wilderness - lost.
2.Snagged by barbed wire, I dream of water seeping through margins, of marsh unpoisoned - rife with species, of ice howling through stone.
3.I long for chaos - my source.
(Next writer: I am the source ….)
After about 5 minutes we each read out our 'section', cued in by the previous writer ending their section with the word which began our own. We recorded this on a phone and I transcribed it. This is the text which resulted.
The Drowned Hundred
I am the morning - golden-rose dawn through the misty fields of all of birdsong, heralding a future shaped by the young. They look ahead, clear-sighted; they dread a turbulent and tangled, barren wilderness.
I am in wilderness, surrounded by our bleak and barren land, seeking, waiting for a sign, a direction, a burning bush to revive and spark alive the hopes and dreams that were drowned.
I am drowned, swallowed by conceit, my body submerged, gulping all that surrounds. Thirst that could not be quenched until I drank everything, enveloping the edge of the world.
I am the edge of the world. My tears mingle with meltwater at the loss of the dawn chorus, sacrificed for artificial intelligence. A deafening silence is shrinking the petrified forest.
I am a petrified forest of never-ending terror felt by drowned souls. Mooning the honey by desperate bees.
I be mooning for honey on a housing estate where the park used to be. Hither and thither I fly, searching for nectar. Then I burst back to the hive to stave the young ones’ hunger.
I am the hunger, not for physical food but for the spiritual, the hunger for a better world based in knowledge, in wisdom, in truth - a positive metamorphosis like that of the caterpillar into a butterfly.
I am the butterfly. I fly as my name suggests; among the trees and plants is where I show my true nature. I love to fly by children.
I am the child, or am I? I will take and fight for myself. I am bubbling with energy. Monstrous tides are stirring my inner core, to expand beyond their limits.
I am a monstrous tide, yearning for more, breaking, sifting the rolling sands of my life for sweet success. I swim lifelong in sea, searching for balance.
I am balance, fighting against the tide of change, the grief that threatens to overwhelm even that of the love-sick salmon.
I am the love-sick salmon, driven onwards by forces beyond me, riding the currents under stormy skies, the riverbank splattered with grey feathers.
I am feathers flying high, flying in the blue, blue sky. The earth is dying, so am I. Fresh air lends care for earth craving.
I am the sea’s craving. Angered by your plunder, choked by your plastic, I rise from icefall, seeking revenge on you my polluters. I munch your cliffs in the morning.
Bedford NWP ('The Higgins community writing group') 11 May 2019
Simon Wrigley
NWP outreach director
11 May 2019
The Drowned Hundred
I am the morning - golden-rose dawn through the misty fields of all of birdsong, heralding a future shaped by the young. They look ahead, clear-sighted; they dread a turbulent and tangled, barren wilderness.
I am in wilderness, surrounded by our bleak and barren land, seeking, waiting for a sign, a direction, a burning bush to revive and spark alive the hopes and dreams that were drowned.
I am drowned, swallowed by conceit, my body submerged, gulping all that surrounds. Thirst that could not be quenched until I drank everything, enveloping the edge of the world.
I am the edge of the world. My tears mingle with meltwater at the loss of the dawn chorus, sacrificed for artificial intelligence. A deafening silence is shrinking the petrified forest.
I am a petrified forest of never-ending terror felt by drowned souls. Mooning the honey by desperate bees.
I be mooning for honey on a housing estate where the park used to be. Hither and thither I fly, searching for nectar. Then I burst back to the hive to stave the young ones’ hunger.
I am the hunger, not for physical food but for the spiritual, the hunger for a better world based in knowledge, in wisdom, in truth - a positive metamorphosis like that of the caterpillar into a butterfly.
I am the butterfly. I fly as my name suggests; among the trees and plants is where I show my true nature. I love to fly by children.
I am the child, or am I? I will take and fight for myself. I am bubbling with energy. Monstrous tides are stirring my inner core, to expand beyond their limits.
I am a monstrous tide, yearning for more, breaking, sifting the rolling sands of my life for sweet success. I swim lifelong in sea, searching for balance.
I am balance, fighting against the tide of change, the grief that threatens to overwhelm even that of the love-sick salmon.
I am the love-sick salmon, driven onwards by forces beyond me, riding the currents under stormy skies, the riverbank splattered with grey feathers.
I am feathers flying high, flying in the blue, blue sky. The earth is dying, so am I. Fresh air lends care for earth craving.
I am the sea’s craving. Angered by your plunder, choked by your plastic, I rise from icefall, seeking revenge on you my polluters. I munch your cliffs in the morning.
Bedford NWP ('The Higgins community writing group') 11 May 2019
Simon Wrigley
NWP outreach director
11 May 2019