In the last week of January 2021, I had the pleasure and privilege to run one of three workshops that formed the most recent virtual teacher training conference run by European Association of Creative Writing Programmes.
We met on three consecutive evenings: 23 participants from 17 countries, world-wide. The remarkable (and very persistent) Lorena Briedis had been asking Simon Wrigley and I to contribute ever since she attended the Metaphoraging workshop that we ran together at the NAWE conference in 2018. Simon wrote up the workshop for the website and you can find that in the archive. I remember it as a little bit crazy as we crammed two hours of workshop into one. It was, as ever, hands on, full of paper and glue and scissors, cut up card and folded books and boxes of knickknacks and treasures. How would this translate to the loneliness of the long-distance Zoomer?
This question of engagement and energy, presence and connection, was something all three presenters tackled and I wish that I had been free to listen in to the other two workshops: Mariana Docampo from Argentina on ‘creating a workshop from the text analysis method’ and Renée Combal-Weiss from France, who explored ‘creative tools to enable connections between home and the virtual classroom’ and, as I learned, had everyone writing stories together. In our workshop we collected words -and, as we heard them round the group, it was wonderful to hear many words not in English [fifteen countries represented, world-wide] and to hear how people who are already fluent in two or three languages were learning still more. I, as always, when in the company of others working in a second or third language, was overwhelmed by the generosity and energy of those who worked with me in English. What exactly is metaphoraging? one participant asked me. Well, it’s a word that Simon coined when we created our workshop, and it is a term I have come to love. I’ll write about it more in another post. For the time being, enjoy that combination of metaphor and foraging.
I had sent out a list of things to bring to the workshop; not simply paper and pen, but scissors, a stapler if you have one, a handbook or reference book of some kind and a small box of treasures to replace the treasures that Simon and I usually take to the workshop. People responded with such imagination and willingness. We made little flip books and invented characters and colours and put these together with various items of clothing to create a whole variety of possibilities: Marigold’s sky-blue skirt, Amy Spoon’s breezy white pyjamas, Chewsy Fingers’ sunburst yellow waistcoat. We worked within several linguistic structures and, a favourite activity, we foraged for noun phrases in the books we had brought with us. The phrases became metaphors as we completed the phrase “the moon is …’ The moon was transformed into delicate stitches through the language of a book on embroidery, the stars and planets each became a bird with distinctive plumage.
Using the rooms where we sat, our collections of treasures, and even other rooms of our homes, we went on a scavenger hunt. If you have used a scavenger hunt, you will know that the search is, essentially, metaphorical and the language reflects that. Of course, and I should have considered this, some of the language sent participants to Google translate. It also drove us to new perspectives. We reflected on the swoop of a warm woolen shawl. We heard the story of the ‘footstep of a hero’ which was a clump of wool collected from the landscape of the `Faroes Islands, where such a collection is regarded as lucky. There was not time to put our treasures to full use, but it was wonderful to see what was in the collections and to see their potential for story making and as metaphors for writing. One person brought a great selection of cooking utensils that I longed to hold. Amongst another collection there was ‘something hidden’, a Roman amphora, beautiful aged glass that is usually hidden away so that it is protected, and another footstep of a hero, shrapnel from the Dardanelles, so different from the soft sheep’s wool from the Faroes.
On Thursday evening, after the final workshop, we met for drinks and chat. I was thrilled by the warmth and energy of those writer teachers and thrilled to be in touch with so many people, world-wide, who love writing and want to share its pleasures and possibilities with others. Lorena Breidis has worked tirelessly to arrange the conference and hosted everything with such generosity and affirmation. She was ably supported by her cockatiel, Juanita, who flew about the room, landing on Lorena’s head or shoulder as we all talked. Renee Combal-Weiss, who had been listening in to Metaphoraging, shared some lines from her response to Roger McGough’s poem, Me: If she were gin she would sip herself slowly, if champagne, she would allow bubbles to fly her into the air, if she were whisky, she would down herself in one. I raised my glass of single malt to her, as I raise it now, to all those writers and teachers, for their enthusiasm and imagination and attention to language, for the knowledge that we are part of a community that dissolves boundaries, that values both our difference and all that we have in common.