Beyond The Sentence

Today in class, we wrote about money. A friend visiting from overseas recently left behind a pile of old and worthless Kenya shilling notes. It is hard to throw away currency and so I thought these old notes might be an interesting creative writing prompt for class. The class, as usual, approached the topic in different ways. There were a number of spoken word pieces which explored what money means to them. There were some short stories which cleverly wove money, or lack of, into the fiction. DB wrote a poem (below) which looks directly at the lifespan of the grubby notes I brought into the classroom. In discussion time after the writing exercise, the students talked about their feelings about money. Some concluded it was ‘the best thing to have in the world’ while others disagreed and said that ‘love and happiness’ were the only things to value. Many in the class said that issues around money have influenced them greatly in their lives, and for some, a signifi...

Whenever we mention poetry in class there is a groan, but teaching creative writing without poetry makes no sense to me. I decided to tackle this in a roundabout way today in class and try to generate poetry without the dissent. I asked the class to write down lists of unconnected words – nouns, verbs, adjectives, whatever. They passed their lists to their neighbour who was tasked with putting the words together either with or without conjunctions. The results were a wonderful mix of profound sense and some nonsense and we all laughed – no groans – about the poems that emerged from the chaos. Apart from the work, which impressed us all, everyone agreed it was yet another example of the creative power of the hive mind of the class. Here are a few examples: - Our new student S. wrote the following: - Happiness is nothing in this lonely room sad and worried friends disappoint but my pencil is my music Two students shared a list of words but came up with ...

In class today we talked about Dushka Zapata meditation on life and W.H. Auden’s famous poem about our inner lives and our perspectives. As always, the debate was interesting and lively with multiple perspectives on the topic. Everyone could relate to the assumption or expectation ‘you want what I want’ from both sides. Discussion focused around the pitfalls of not examining this stance in life, and the dangers of seeing one’s closest people as one; not separate. Auden’s poem meant that grief was discussed too and how separate we can feel when we are grieving. Two of the students talked about travelling from prison to court and back again in the prison service bus. They watched from behind the reinforced windows people walking or driving to work and wondered what their lives might be like, what issues they face. They wondered if those people noticed the bus, or saw them passing by. Did they think about us as we thought about them? Do our loved ones think a...

Today, the former President of Kenya, Daniel arap Moi died. He has been a prominent feature of Kenyan life for many decades and how we feel about him, his era and legacy are not simple but multi-layered. Today in class we discussed this. We talked about memories, experiences, and impressions of a man who has had a profound influence on Kenya since Independence to the present day. Some remembered ‘maziwa ya Nyayo’ or Moi’s Milk; the name for the twice a week delivery of free milk to all children in schools across Kenya. For children mostly too young to understand the complex nuances of political life, children appreciated the milk and took it as a sign that their President cared for them. This feeling largely endured despite the darker periods of President Moi’s rule. His benevolence to children is remembered above all else. Nearly everyone wrote quite factual pieces today; unusual in our increasingly creatively confident class. One student, QXT, a Chinese nationa...

Obviously, for anyone spending time in prison, judgement has had a huge impact on their lives. However, quite apart from legal judgements, most people live looking through an almost invisible prism of moment to moment judgements. 'It's Not What You Think' was the theme of our writing exercise in class today. Students wrote in any form about a memory, or a story or poem which explored the theme. DB wrote a pair of tender poems which look at the two sides of judgement. One looked at the outer value judgements, and the voice of other poem is aware of the illusion judgement and moves beyond to compassion. JK wrote a wonderful story based in rural Kenya about an outbreak of typhoid. Joy, in quarantine, distrusts one medical workers seeming interest in her, and wonders what her motives are. When she drops her suspicion and fear, she discovers an opportunity she had never imagined. One of our new students, CNG, wrote about the dangers of instant physical attraction....

In our class today, we did something different. Instead of the students writing individually from a prompt, we worked on a group exercise.  We imagined a place – a bar in a busy town in Iceland; a country none of us has ever been. We spent time on the details of the bar; décor but also its smell and feel. Everyone was given a different character with a few details. We then wrote individually from each point of view about why they were in the bar the night of the shooting. The group read each of their pieces out loud and amongst the laughter, it was clear that the collective piece impressed us all with its breadth and richness. Here is a composite of what the group wrote: Einar Our winter in Iceland was long this year. It is already March and the weather is still cold. It snowed the whole day today. I am alone at the bar. It is 10pm and already full. It’s always full but tonight is Ladies Night – which means free wine. But I don’t want wine. Last time I sat her...

Yesterday in class, our writing prompt was a small brass bell. The bell has a particularly clear tone. Everyone wrote about whatever the bell sound triggered in their memory, or thoughts and associations. One student wrote a spoken word piece - a polemic about the sounds of the apocalypse. Another wrote a poem about bells being part of the fabric of her family's life back home in South Africa. One of our new students wrote about how the bell made her recall the sound of the clock chiming at her grandmother's house in South America. For another, the bell triggered a memory of a train journey in China two years ago. And for another student, the bell recalled a long-forgotten school days memory which inspired a wonderful village life creative nonfiction piece from JM. The task did not focus on telling a story but more on the sensory trigger and allowing that to lead our writers and to lean into and trust their inspiration. As the morning drew to a close, and the s...