What’s happening in a group near you?

Two questions that I return to repeatedly are: what is it that draws us to our writing groups, again and again? And what is it that makes people not allow themselves the space that such a group offers? The perception, perhaps is that it is ‘all about teacher well-being’, or simply ‘a nice thing’, and we don’t have time for that. Writing groups remain a space where we can talk seriously with like minded people about the work we do in school. Here is where we touch base. We are reminded of some of the things that are important about teaching writing and about being with young people. We find our own spaces within the writing and learn from each other as we share what we have written. There are always new ideas to be had, a takeaway, and we always seem to grow even more ideas between us. When I hear stories from schools, I know that, more than ever, we need such spaces. We leave refreshed. We are encouraged and inspired. Each time we meet, children benefit. 

A London group (plus dog) were also out on Hampstead Heath this Saturday. Thank you to all those of you who keep organising the meetings and coming up with ideas. You are making an immeasurable contribution to the well-being of teachers and students and to the health of language and of writing for us all. As the old Heineken adverts used to claim for their beers, teachers’ writing groups refresh parts …

Perhaps one reason that we keep returning to the Refectory at Norwich Cathedral is that it serves good coffee and pastries. Mostly we can’t resist the tempting display of cakes and croissants and sausage rolls. They are part of the treat of writing together. On Saturday 22nd April, five of us gathered around a square table in the corner and had fun with words, shared teaching stories and got down to some serious writing. This week we began with listing clichés -which proved more difficult than I expected and then we played around with them switching subjects and comparisons so that we twisted the clichés a little: drunk as a post, happy as the hills, old as the moon….

We so enjoyed using found texts two sessions ago, taking lines from Enid Blyton and a science test that I thought we’d have another go. I had thought to use instructions from packaging as the source text but left them behind and so collected some leaflets found between the bus station and the cathedral. The taking and rearranging of phrases that already exist frees the composing mind in a different way and, as we discovered, can lend itself to both the comic and the serious: “we love children/ hire the latest and the best/ avoid disappointment” and a contemplative poem derived from words in the visitor’s guide to the cathedral. It struck me that using short texts to create even shorter found poems could be a productive regular starter for a workshop. The word choices and rhythms of the source text can make it possible for us to experiment with a voice or style that we may not naturally use.

The main focus for writing was a poem by Barbara Hamby, The Language of Bees: ‘The language of bees contains 76 distinct words for stinging, ….. /the language of bees has 39 words for queen – regina apiana, empress of the hive, czarina of nectar, maharani of the ovum, sultana of stupor, principess of dark desire./ The language of bees contains 22 words for sunshine.” It is a poem that invites you to think about the nature of the creature or object whose language you consider: what do they know, what their preoccupations and landscapes? We wrote about the language of tea sets, trees, water, pastries …. Each one made me think differently about both subject and the writing of it. It is often in that time of reading aloud, of hearing each other’s approach to a task you have been wrestling with yourself that we learn and grow as writers. I am always delighted and amazed at the ways people solve problems and find their own ways of saying things. Listening to the writing of others opens up doors.

At the end of the morning we were refreshed, as always. We looked at the trail of crumbs beneath the table and regretted that they hadn’t been included in the language of pastries and we were smiling, glad to be writing together. One of us said how glad she was to have this time for herself, and that is true, we write for ourselves and are nourished by it. It is one of the great strengths of our groups, we are able to immerse ourselves in the writing and the reading; we make connections and share ideas with no sense of strain, and somewhere, sometime, later, some element of what happened around that table eases itself into our classrooms. And we are all the better for it.

In fact, we were so engrossed that I forgot to take any pictures until after we had all dispersed. We began our writing with a combination of listing and freewriting,  prompted by ‘I have found ….’  It was fun to compare notes and hear about stray dogs and lost time.

We moved on to creating found poems and began by thinking about Annie Dillard’s observation: ‘Turning a text into a poem doubles that poem’s context. The original meaning remains intact but now it swings between two poles.’ We worked with pages torn from Enid Blyton’s The Blue Story Book (1941) and The Complete Self Educator. The dated qualities of both texts certainly heightened our sense of meanings working with and against each other mostly, I have to confess, in hilarious ways.

 Here is a taste :

If you earn a living by doing this, then, you are called a professional chemist.
For a moment, Susan looked as if she was going to burst into tears. 

 And a bit later there was:

You may be surprised to learn that water will not stretch.
John was trying very hard to be brave. 

On another day we may have worked differently with the blithe assumptions and attitudes enshrined in both sets of prose. What is always interesting is the challenge of working with an existing set of words to make something new.

We finished with found objects. We each chose a button from a small collection with the idea of using that as the starting point from which to build a character. Where does the button come from? Who wears that piece of clothing? Where? How? Who are they? As it happened, several of us were reminded of familiar clothing when we chose buttons and so, between us, we produced both fiction and memoir.

It was enormously pleasurable to be writing together in person, after so many meetings via Zoom. And good for people to be making connections and planning to visit each other’s classrooms.

We began by writing three lists:

• a list of favourite places to be

• a list of places you dislike: (mine started with the staff meeting on a Monday morning, and ended with the the waiting room at Horsham when the train terminates there...)

• a list of words and phrases that people say which you find annoying

As we shared words and phrases we moved between the lists - which made for some interesting combinations!

Next we read Bill Bryson's rant about McDonalds before launching into some freewriting inspired by anything on our lists.

For the longer writing we read two stanzas from Dorothy Wordsworth's Thoughts on my Sick Bed: 

No prisoner in this lonely room,
I saw the green Banks of the Wye,
Recalling thy prophetic words,
Bard, Brother, Friend from Infancy!

No need of motion, or of strength,
Or even the breathing air;
- I thought of Nature’s loveliest scenes
And with Memory I was there.

and also Seth Cook’s poem, 'Still in Ward B, Side Room', which also explores the contrast between two physical spaces:

Today I jump the ditches,
leap over dry-stone walls.
Yes, I want the window open.  

Today I ascend
with the ease of ascending.
There is no rust bolted gate.
There is no tea trolley.

We then set to writing about being in one place while imagining another ourselves. From Top Shop, Tescos and a whole school assembly we were transported all over the world!

It was a tricky but worthwhile exercise, and we felt that students might well understand the notion of feeling trapped and wanting to escape elsewhere.

Next meeting is scheduled for the 4th March in Henfield.

 This month, Jeni was determined to get us writing. Seven of us met at Norwich Cathedral's Refectory to start with excellent coffee and pastry.

A few warm up activities later, and we were out into the cathedral and the close for an hour's exploring and writing. Cathedrals offer amazing opportunities to wander, stare, think and write and we used the time at our disposal well. A couple of members of the group left early because of other commitments (but it was great to see them, nonetheless) Five of us met up again at the end of an hour's wandering and writing to share our experiences, share something we had written, and to talk more about writing and about the teaching of writing.

While we have met weekly on-line during term time since the pandemic started (and have continued since), it has been most rewarding to actually meet for real and have the types of conversations that you just can't have on Zoom - you know the sort: the conversations where people talk over each other, or where two conversations take place at the same time in smaller groups. We are looking forward to our next meet up which will be before the Christmas rush starts in earnest.

You may tell your students that the contents are more important than the covering – but our green thoughts were evident.

Sitting outside the café, in Russell Square Gardens, on a busy Saturday morning should have felt normal – and soon it did. We settled down with our impressive, and not-so-impressive notebooks open, pens ready, with coffee and the most wonderful Italian pastries. The important part of the session had started – which was better, the croissant or the pastries? We were regular attendees at writing sessions before the pandemic, although not all on the same ones. It did not take long to settle into the comfort, and stimulus, of writing together, despite the years since the last ones. And we began with talking: a catch up on who we were, what our connections were, and how much we had missed this opportunity to write for ourselves, and, of course, the joy of talking about writing.

We began with the equivalent of a physical warm up – words in the air. And, as always, connections were made across the group, and permission to borrow from each other.  My favourite steals were ‘world domination’ and ‘get over it’!

The session’s focus was Virginia Woolf, and other writers of happenings in one day. Bloomsbury – Mrs Dalloway – was the starting point for our writing, and our then our enjoyment of each other’s writing. We found Woolf a disconcerting jumping off point but expanded this to influences on her as well as what else was written at that time. This led to the concept of time: Bergson’s objective time, and la durée (“duration”).

The idea was to stretch out what we had seen, experienced, lived that day. And these details triggered thought pathways that at times could be painful, funny, and so different. One writer noted the many pigeons nicking their own sustenance from left over pastries, and she imagined their generations since Woolf, and T S Eliot who had honeymooned in the Hotel overlooking this garden (she had done some preparatory research and developed her ideas before coming to the session!). Another detailed the people walking into the park, focusing in on a pair of women sitting at a table ‘legs crossed towards each other’. For a third, it was the Irish question and the signing of the treaty at the time of Mrs Dalloway. And me, I walked my character along the route I had taken from the station, using a man I had seen and noted for his odd behaviour.

For all of us, the writing process began in anticipation of the meeting. and developed in the physicality of our meeting. leaning in to hear each other, sharing ideas and follow up reading – all this is part of the delight of writing together.

And the main memory from the session? Our shared enjoyment of the pastries!

Next came an NWP old favourite: Kate Bingham’s poem Things I Learned at University to inspire our own learning lists - before drawing on ideas from Kate Clanchy’s wonderful new book How to Grow Your Own Poem. ‘Table’ from the Turkish by Edip Cansever proved an excellent way of moving from concrete to abstract ideas in poetry.

The responses were, as ever, delightful. We enjoyed the insights of ‘things I learned living on my own’ alongside ‘things I learned during lockdown’ and were fascinated and disturbed by the image of a resentful kiss piled on a troubled marital bed; and heartened by the filing cabinet filled up at the end of term - where confidence was filed under ‘t’ for terror.

Marjory led a session of writing exercises based on memories of encounters with nature, encouraging research into what we had been taking more notice of lately. Janet discovered that porcupine spines have an antibiotic property – useful for when they stab themselves falling out of trees; Susie had photographed flowers and shrubs breaking out of urban gardens; Katie had discovered London plane trees.

We had agreed a feedback session would help move us forward with our writing, but we found that the follow up of the next week was too soon for most of us. Due to ever changing work commitments given the situation in schools, and meeting up with family not seen for months, we felt that having a weekend between would have been much better. So, that’s what we’ll do next month!

UEA Norwich 21.2.2020

On Thursday 21st February a group of teachers from the UEA Norwich group met in the city centre to write. (Same time same place as that date last year.) We went in search of characters, eaves-dropping, people watching, and thinking about the city as a character in its own right.  It was a wet, cold day so there was no great incentive to be out in the nearby market or along the winding Lanes. Two people did go to look at the church of St Peter Mancroft, where there are angels carved in the roof beams and they stayed long enough to be inspired to write words for a tombstone. The rest of us remained under cover with coffee and found plenty to prompt our writing. One of us was describing an intriguing man who seemed full of contradictions and who was himself writing. Our writer looked down at his own words and when he looked up again his subject was nowhere to be seen. A small mystery. Had he, we wondered, been writing about our writer? It is not without reason that Norwich is called the city of stories. We reflected on that, its history of reformers, rebels, industrialists and philanthropists; its accommodation of immigrant populations over the centuries; its painters, actors and bare knuckle fighters…

As we walked down for an early dinner, we talked about the pleasure of meeting and writing together, how it has transformed and strengthened our teaching and how we continue to learn from the variety of people who are part of our group. 

SoUTH DOWNS WRITING TEachers @ SUSSEX 30.1.2020

January's meeting took place in Billingshurst, around that roaring fire as promised. 

We began with simple word lists. Sharing them created space for crepuscular porpoises and sonorous petticoats to make their appearance. Then there was some time for freewriting: about anything that was on our minds: a task embraced very whole-heartedly by some!

A combination of postcard images of people and places provided the stimulus for some longer writing. The same picture of a wizened old man in a shack generated both a fascinating exploration about different shoes and the imagined characters of their wearers, and a simple poem about a much-missed grandparent. 

The physical and metaphorical heat and power of a book newly arrived in a package from Mexico provided another narrative. (Perhaps the author of the book in question should hear it, Nikki?) 

There was the genus of a novel (perhaps) set in the abandoned village of Tyne Cot in Dorset. Pheasants and foxes made unexpected appearances elsewhere - and my personal highlight of the evening was a sonnet about, well, killing.

NWP @ NPG LONDON (free spaces) 8.2.2020

Rachel led the prompts at the National Portrait Gallery, leading to lively writing and discussion.

SoUTH DOWNS WRITING TEachers @ FITTLEWORTH 9.3.2020

We squeezed in a meeting on the Monday just before we went into lockdown. Things were very different at the start of the week - by the end of the same week, schools were closed. So it was, understandably, a small and select gathering in Fittleworth, and we took our inspiration from resources at the Poetry Society. (Thank you to Simon Wrigley for the suggestion.) We began with some listing: the days successes and disasters then focused on some poets who use negatives in poetry to create writing that can be read in lots of different ways, suggesting parallel worlds and alternatives, including Andrew Waterhouse’s poem Not an Ending, ‘I Am Not I’ by Juan Jamon Jimenez and Michael Donaghy’s poem ‘The Excuse’. We then used real and imagined memories, trying to make the imagined ones as convincing as possible. My favourite on the night was a poem about an imagined final visit to a loved relative.

WHODUNNIT at the wellcome 25.1.2020

The Whodunnit group gathered at Euston’s Wellcome Collection for their regular meeting on Saturday 25th January - where their numbers were swelled by members of other NWP groups, and even some newcomers - to celebrate a decade of the project and to mark the stepping down (but not stepping away!) of one of its co-founders, Simon Wrigley.

Inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style coupled with a focus on voice - and then by the exhibitions at the Wellcome: Play Well, Being Human and Misbehaving Bodies - writing was, as ever, varied and distinctive. From Stanislavsky to snails, buckets to bathrooms, cancer to Argos catalogues, writers shared their efforts to say the unsayable.