Today is Friday, and that means I get a break from the business of the week. This past week, on Tuesday, my Creative Workshop Class hosted a poet in residence: Lavinia Greenlaw, who is a professor of poetry and Creative Writing at East Anglia University, which for Creative Writing and poetry in England, is a more prestigious university to attend than Oxford or Cambridge. She gave my class (which only has 12 students in it) a lecture on using imagery in poetry and also on utilizing those skills in larger pieces of prose. I must say, I think I learned more in that two-hour lecture than I have in the entire week! She was absolutely inspiring. One of the poems we discussed that I particularly admired was a poem called "Her Little Turquoise Scarf" by Selmia Hill:
When I found her little turquoise scarf
I got a pair of scissors from the drawer,
split her little turquoise jungles open
and sent her parrots screeching to the floor.
On first read, the language sounds so natural, it's almost conversational in form. But when you look at it closer, you realize that it indeed has a regular meter, and even a rhyme! (drawer/floor) The tone I think is incredibly effective at conveying the anger of a discovered affair, and the metaphors are striking. I also learned from Lavinia's discussion of this piece that the use of an image or metaphor does a better job of communicating a complex emotion rather than actually describing it.
During her talk she also had us do a really interesting activity where we considered a place connected with our past or childhood. We then wrote down words to describe this place, but then set those words aside. Then instead of just describing the place as we normally would, she had us consider the actual sound of the place's name. We mapped out the sound in a graph, indicating how sharp and emphasized the syllables were etc. Then, we had a free write period in which we described the place based on the shape and sound of the word. It really created a much more colorful, textured description than we would have necessarily written on our own. Below is the bit I wrote, about my childhood cottage at Big Star Lake in Northern Michigan:
Undulation is in the name--Big Star Lake. It pulls, it pushes. It swallows you up and spits you back out. A factory, punching out buttons: one blue, three red, another yellow. Vacationers come here, little buttons themselves, wielding bottles of tanning oil, grocery store novels, and noisy maritime contraptions. A week or maybe two later, they go home, a bit sandy, a lot burned, but not as different as they had hoped. If you lie amongst the grass blades struggling out of the sand, you can hear it pulse: the whirring of boats, the gurgle of wake, the screeching of children: the pushings and pullings of summer.
In my Art and Craft of Fiction class, I had the opportunity to read to the class a piece which I have just begun work on, which I will likely shape into my dissertation at the end. I am really excited at the response it got in class, and I'm encouraged to keep going. I thought it was funny that after class, several of my British friends in the class came up to me and told me how they thought my accent made it even that much better. I have been experiencing the reverse as well! Whenever one of my classmates reads something aloud, I wish they'd read my work too, because I have the feeling it might sound more distinguished! :)
I don't want to speak too soon, but I might be taking a painting or drawing course in the art school next semester! I'm really excited, and I'm hoping that it works out with my schedule. The art school is in Winchester, which is the next town north of Southampton, so I'd have to take the train there, but I think it would be completely worth it! That and, I love Winchester. It is the stereotypical quaint little English town. And I hear, it is somehow connected to King Arther, but I have to investigate that.
This weekend, I am traveling with the women's volleyball team to Portsmouth for a National League Volleyball game. It is only one match, so I'm not sure how much playing time I will get, but it's always fun to travel and compete with the team. I'm hoping that my jumping training program will start to improve my hitting skills soon! Next weekend, the volleyball team has a tournament in Leeds, and we will be spending Saturday in Bath on the way to Leeds. I'm really excited!
Until Next Time,
Sarah
