Writing the Body The body is a container for hunger, sickness, laughter, anxiety, spirit, desire, difference and change. How has your body been instrumental in creating or denying options for you? How has it defined your life, or has it? Does it contain your personality? If your body could talk, what would it say to its parts? How would your feet, stomach, shoulders and legs speak to your eyes? Are you the master or mistress of gaze? And what of the mirror? How many faces and bodies do you see there? We will examine the theme of The Body to write in forms most comfortable for you: poem, memoir, essay, novel, story or fairy tale. Short in-class writing exercises and reading suggestions will help you generate new ideas, and they will help you to continue with projects you have already begun. Bibliography and syllabus provided. Institutions, Surveillance and the Development of a Writing Life In this class we will explore the relationship of institutional controls to your writing lives. Have parental, academic, occupational, social and political institutions, in the guise of helping and protecting you, actually hindered your quest for self-discovery and professional development? Is direction from above actually a method of surveillance that inhibits individuality? Is surveillance a shadowy figure that stalks rather than nurtures? Do we survey others, as well? In class writing exercises and discussion will help you identify uses of surveillance that have blocked, and may be continuing to block, your creative growth. We will attempt to develop personal and communal tools that reflect nurturance and productivity rather than Big Brother/Sister watchfulness. Writing Oral History Interview friends, relatives, neighbors, and workers in your community. Develop your research into published stories, poems, memoirs, biographies or newspaper articles. Warm-up in class writing exercises, discussion and introduction to oral history techniques. Autobiographical Writing Autobiography is an expression of the self in the world. Write your story in poetry, memoir, journal, essay or fragment form. Class emphasizes the importance of placing your work in historical perspective. In-class writing and discussion. Poetry Critique Workshop: Writing and the Jewish Self Beginning, intermediate and experienced poets critique each other's poems in a non-threatening and supportive environment. We will look at each poet's work intimately, focusing on speaker, audience, sound, content and line breaks. All forms of poetry are welcome, including fragments and work that the poet has just begun or has even thought of abandoning. We will discuss the difficulties of writing in isolation, the relationship of the poet to society and the presence of Jewish voice in our poetry. There will be some introduction to the poems of Nellie Sachs, Paul Celan and Irena Klepfisz and a short writing exercise to get you going. Please bring in one poem for critique and photocopies for class members. Writing Your Yiddish Self: You may not know any more Yiddish than gey shluffin or g'zuntheit; yet, you know what a good Yiddish shrug looks like. You feel it in your skin. This hands-on writing workshop addresses your relationship to those personalities, characteristics and events that compose your personal history and pull together your sense of self. Short writing exercises, sharing your work (if you want to) and discussion of the creative process, will help you to define and to understand, not just to feel or act out, your Yiddish expression of self. Write Your Life Story - Intergenerational Classroom at SPICE (Seattle Program in Service for the Elderly) High school students and senior adults learn methods to remember and record their life stories. In-class writing exercises help participants discover the writing forms most comfortable for them -- autobiography, biography, journal fragments, poetry, fiction, essays and dreams. Participants are invited to share their writing in a non-threatening and supportive environment. They will also be invited to read in a public setting and to contribute to an Intergenerational Chapbook. |
This page was last updated on: October 26,
2003
teaching in the Hugo House library |
Shelter and the Writing Process, Part I: Language as Haven explores language as a haven for self-expression and emotional shelter. Is language, by way of reading as well as writing, a haven for you? Is your writing space at home, at work, or in the classroom, a place of comfort? Does language help you find the essence of yourself, your true nature? Short writing exercises help discover your relationship to language, shelter and home. |
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A Sample of Classes I've Taught |
Record your dreams on a day to day basis. Use the themes that emerge from your dreams to create stories, poems, memoirs or well-chiseled fragments. |
WRITING WORKS where you write to learn poetry non-fiction dreams |
Think of journal writing as reflecting your disorderly self. You will find surprises there, surprises to use in writing projects later on-- when you need to employ your orderly self. Let all of your writing selves out in your journal. Don't inhibit them. Let them breathe. - Esther Altshul Helfgott |
