Here I am with my old mate, Harvey, we go
way back to university days, so I needed to come along and see if he knows what
he’s talking about!
He suggests that if we are starting a
creative writing group we talk to whoever is in charge of gifted and talented
at our schools because they may have funding we can use, since a writing group
is an extension activity.
Harvey also runs a book club and a
philosophy club. He taps the gifted and
talented money to buy books for the book club (which end up in the library).
Students choose the book they are going to read.
The first year Harvey ran his creative
writing group he says it wasn’t so successful. It was too unfocussed. Then he
saw the school focus in a major way on the school production so he decided that
his writing group needed a focus.
So he decided to use National Poetry Day as
the focus and have a poetry writing competition. Senior and Junior categories,
$50 prize each, $25 runner up. He got 60 entries. Use an outside judge,
anonymous entries. Restricted to no more than 4 poems per student. He gave the
material to students to design and publish as a book. Winners and runners up
had to be named. The only rule he gave was that they had to respect the poet’s
layout of the poem and he gave the title (chosen from a phrase in one of the
winning poems). Otherwise they could decide on the layout, cover, design, font
etc etc. Prints 40 to start and after that on demand – free copies to the
authors and charges $2 per copy to everyone else.
Anybody can enter the competition – it is
not restricted to people in the creative writing group. He got 60 entries the first year and it’s been
running for several years now.
Q: any problems with authenticity? Yes,
Harvey checks on them and has had some problems with it in the past.
It’s ok to have a poem inspired by someone
else’s work, as long as that is acknowledged.
Harvey also encourages the students to
enter the National Poetry Society competition and has dispensation for the same
poems to appear as the school publication doesn’t count as an ‘official
publication’.
Suggestions which have worked for Harvey:
·
Regular meetings
·
Poetry Day and competition
focus
·
Visiting poets reading and
running workshops
·
Use Juicy Writing by Bridget Lowry
·
Google “creative writing
exercises”
There was some discussion of participants’
experiences at their schools with running creative writing workshops:
·
Small group that fizzled when
teacher left
·
Someone who ‘hijacks’ the Y10
camp for poetry-writing purposes (way to go!)
·
Full school ‘Young Writers’
Awards’ – 6 different text types. Literary luncheon, poetry readings, with
guest speaker; prizes book/movie vouchers, and top pieces published in the
school magazine. Includes team entries. Some class time given for editing in
the week before the entry deadline. Makes everyone enter something.
·
Use of chocolate for bribery
purposes seems widespread at a range of schools!
·
Large group, meets weekly,
publishes a newspaper regularly during the year and a collection at the end of
the year – range of text types.
·
Poetry workshops as a rotation
in a range of activities for gifted and talented days.
·
Inspiring poems by looking at
their town using Google Earth and getting students to use metaphors and similes
to write a poem describing their town.
·
2 day writers’ camp
specifically for y9 and 10 writers – shoulder-tapped. Quite landscape-based.
About 20-30 kids – best writers. Work is published. A range of different staff
involved running workshops, plus visiting writers.
·
Writing group blog where
members can post their work and comment on each other’s writing.
·
Students have a poem week –
English classes are rotated to hear a teacher’s favourite poem.
Harvey’s
Tips for student poets:
1.
All poems are not brush paintings.
It’s ok to go back, rethink, rework, revise, chop and add. The poem can be
better than the ‘flash’
2.
Read with your ear. Listen to
the poem. Read it out loud. What parts stand out? Does it sound smooth or
lumpy? Is it too soft or too loud? Are any words clunky?
3.
More or less? Have you said all
that needs to be said? Have you said too much? What can you take away? Any
filler? Any flat lines? Can you clarify?
4.
Be unusual. Write about dog
breeding, or your Uncle Sam’s beer mat collection, or Linus, or your sister’s
obsession with the bagpipes, or carburettors and stock car engines. Use the
words you find there. Avoid the moon, love, feeling like shit, being dumped…
5.
Titles are tricky. They are so
important; they can change everything. Have another think. Is it OK? What else
could it be? What else could it say? What do you want the title to do? What is
its function in the poem?
6.
Let it lie in the drawer. Leave
it for a while. It won’t run away if you close the drawer tightly.
7.
Proofred your work! Use spellcheck.
Double check. Many writers are terrible copy editors. Save multiple copies.
Then double check the final version.
What
Harvey would like more of:
·
More peer review – students
reading each other’s work.
·
Workshopping the writing.
Remember – poetry is not an assessment
task! The only rule is that you have to write. You are producing, not just
consuming. Harvey gave us this great quote from Kurt Vonnegut:
“Go into
the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a
very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how
well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the
shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a
lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward.
You will have created something.”
