Interpreting
The following approaches might be used when writing groups want to investigate and unravel their thoughts about events, texts or topics of mutual interest or concern.
For example, each person might
write freely from a different line of a poem
write in the voice of a different object or character
incorporate a story’s objects and events into their own story or sequence
Explaining texts, pictures and experiences to each other, translating them into our own words, releases different voices, styles and attitudes.
Before reading a text or approaching a topic, we might write what we already know and think about it, acknowledging what we’re not certain of, what we might want to ask or find out.
During reading or studying, we might write in order to reflect, question, anticipate and predict. By doing this we may be able to more clearly detect the passage of our thoughts and learning.
Later writing might re-interpret our earlier ideas. With hindsight we may wish to explain why we first thought as we did, and why we now think and feel as we do.
Here are some group exercises in interpreting:
Picture Prompts
Each writer looks at an image – it needn’t be the same one. In quick succession, some of the following prompts are read aloud – about one every 30 seconds or so - and the writers scribble immediate thoughts in response. They don’t need to respond to all of them, so the reader should not wait till every writer has ‘finished’. Writers can decide which ones they use later.
What first attracts your attention?
What does it remind you of?
What sounds might you hear ?
Describe the texture or smell of something in the image.
What might lie outside the frame?
What might just have taken place, or be about to happen?
Why did the photographer or artist make this image?
On closer inspection, what small detail did you not notice at first?
For whom might this image be special, and why?
What caption might you give this image?
Then each writer takes off in their own direction - perhaps for 10-15 minutes.
Pairs might share by handing the image to their partner as they read or talk about what they wrote or thought.
colours: what’s in a name?
Here is an image of some paint samples printed on strips of card by a major paint company, picked up for free at a paint retailer. These paint colours are given names, as well as numbers. In this case they are also labeled in one of the categories - calm, rich, fresh, warm. (It would be a rare paint company that dreamt up categories of stressy, skint, stale and parky. Perhaps it would make no less sense, but sales might be poor. Associations matter.)
The names are partly for ease of identification, but also to aid sales by associating colours with exotic places, pleasant moods, or desirable objects. (Our garage door is basically yellow, but the name of the colour on the tin was 'Tibetan gold'. The paint is now flaking and I've long forgotten the number, but I can still remember the name. So I suppose the association has worked. I get a pleasant glow. It's not that I think of the Dalai Lama smiling outside some ornate Buddhist temple. But Chinese troops at dawn? Himalayan jaundice? Not so much.)
What would you name these colours? What associations - pleasant or unpleasant - do they have for you? This could be done singly or in pairs. In a large group, sharing afterwards would provoke plenty of discussion. One group generated 'Mendelssohn green, Baguette and onion, Orchard owl and Faint Michelle'.
THINGS I’ve Learned
Read Kate Bingham’s poem ‘Things I’ve Learned at University’ and write another list of ‘things’ learned…about teaching, family life, pets…anything. Use How to, When to and Where to stems to get started.
See an example of how this has been used to create Things that I Learnt in the Sea.
collections
You will need:
some ideas/examples of information texts' contexts, purposes and structures (e.g. explanatory text-boxes, museum information plaques, captions, annotations, advertisements, instruction texts, health warnings, historical quizzes and time-lines, labelled diagrams etc)
containers: old chocolate boxes, cardboard lids, egg-boxes, moulded plastic packaging
collections of 'stuff and clutter' - from pockets, bags, cupboards, bins, button tins, bric-a-brac, toy-boxes, floor-sweepings. leaves, pencil cases
Method: Collect, discuss in pairs, compose, write, display, tour and admire, discuss and reflect.
Using Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’
A sequence in seven steps. Please use flexibly - adapt, abridge, abandon
1. 'Read' the first Chapter of Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival'. Talk about issues of representation (race/class/gender) and provenance (Shaun Tan's experience of Australia/ his use of photographs of Ellis Island). The effect of the style of drawing and the period represented are worth discussing. Who would you like to be? Not like to be ? What connections can you make to your own life and your understanding of the world?
2. Return to pages 2 and 3 (see above). Challenge writers to work in pairs or small groups to attach a single word or phrase to each one of the 9 small pictures. Explore the effect of attaching nouns or verbs only (what are the hands 'doing'?); try adjectives; try prepositions; try a nine-word sentence. Discuss 'warm' and 'cold' words, by considering the different emotional 'temperature' reached by attaching words and phrases such as 'photograph' or 'family' or 'together' or 'the three of us' to the top left picture. (This will have a bearing on how a similar image is 'read' in chapter 2.)
3. Discuss the openings of stories by asking, 'Where does this story start?' and consider the effects of different kinds of sentences that might be attached to the scene of the picture on page 3 - a line of dialogue, a descriptive statement, a foreshadowing, a question.
4. Create a 'class poem' by writing down suggested sentences and arranging them in order - introducing a refrain. The following are first drafts and might be trimmed, scanned and patterned for further effect.
e.g. from Birmingham writers 28.1.2014
Time to let go
Time to let go.
Letting go of the past to hope for a better future.
Time to let go.
A family divided by dreams.
Time to let go.
Heavy heart.
e.g from Reading writers 28.2.2014 having shaped the first responses, following clues of tense, person and pattern
Leaving
Living with loss:
"I'll see you again."
Losing my life:
"I am sad to be leaving."
Leaving, it costs.
"I don't want to go."
Loving you now.
"I know."
Since we have all, at one time or another, left one location and gone to another, we can reflect on the reasons and choices available to us. Whose point of view will we choose - and what difference does it make? This exercise can generate personal writing of all kinds. For some groups, it may be enough to stop here and use this as a jumping-off point for further writing.