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monthly reflection on current Lapidus-related issues

December 2010

physical writers and prose poets

The National Association of Writers in Education annual conference in November in Cheltenham, UK (see link below) brought together many involved in writing in education, including a significant number of writers studying in higher education.

The programme included several presentations on aspects of writing for wellbeing, such as Jacqueline Harret & Pat Ryan 'Creating Words: Creating Well-being' ; Beverly Frydman & Nadia Narain 'Yoga on the Page'; Helena Blakemore & Maggie Butt 'The Creative Space: a time to think'; Ursula Troche 'Writing, Well-being and Multiculturalism'; Fiona Hamilton 'Writing for Wellbeing'; and Cheryl Moskowitz 'Writing Collectively: The Making of a Group'.

One of the ways this organisation fertilises and nourishes writing activity is by expanding our notions of what and how we can write.

Beverly Frydman invited writers to consider their posture and physical wellbeing in her workshop 'Yoga on the Page'. With a light and confident manner, she asked participants to try do some yoga stretches and movements while seated. Writers sitting at desks are liable to have hunched shoulders and to be relatively immobile for extended periods. Muscles can become taut. A complementary stretch can prevent tightening and enhance comfort. This is good for releasing physical tension. It also affects the writing.

A tennis player knows that reactions are slowed if the body is bent forwards, whereas in a more upright posture nerve stimuli are quicker and responses more efficient. A simple exercise demonstrates how the hands and fingers are stronger and more efficient if a more open, upright and flexible posture is adopted. When participants were invited to alternate writing with yoga and conscious breathing, some observed how their creative process was influenced. Some noted more 'flow', others said that the themes that emerged were surprising or new. A sense of connection with self as physical as well as emotional and creative was experienced by many.

The 'boxes' we get used to are often barely conscious. We are familiar with the writer as a thinker, mover, shaker - but what about the writer as physical being? The poet as a writer of poetry - but what about the prose poet?

Patricia Debney challenged participants to consider the edges and differences between poetry and prose. Her talk, entitled Rock the Boat: making and teaching the prose poem included readings from her collection Littoral Drift . The prose poems are justified left and right on the page, without being deliberately arranged with line breaks as a poem would be. Each has several short paragraphs.

Patricia did a writing residency in a beach hut on the east coast of England. Her observations of the coastal terrain led to her investigation of geological vocabulary, which became central to the writing. The 'edges' of land and sea, of sea and sky - the nature of horizon - preoccupied her and the evocative prose poems she wrote embodied in their form considerations of merging and boundary. Scientific terms turned out to be more poetic than expected.

Prose poems 'look like' prose yet have many features of poetry - such as compression and layering of meanings, attention to language, rhythm, sound of words, and pace. They allow freedoms to writer and reader that 'poetry' does not, or rather they have a different 'frame' within which to explore different complexities. It could be a valuable form for people who are daunted by 'poetry' but who are eager to write poetically; a way of overcoming inhibitions and encouraging experimentation through a kind of 'poetic documentation'.

For the National Association of Writers in Education click here NAWE

© F Hamilton