Writing and Teaching

Writing and Teaching:
From 2012 till 2015 I was the chair of the National Association of Writers in Education and for many years I was editor of their journal Writing in Education. It’s a wonderful organisation that brings writers, teachers and students together in the common pursuit of effective writing and effective teaching. “NAWE is the one organisation supporting the development of creative writing of all genres and in all educational and community settings throughout the UK. www.nawe.co.uk

I find that the two activities of writing and the teaching of writing go hand in hand. I often get inspiration for my own writing when I am with students and they often come up with ideas and strategies that I had not thought of myself.

I use a lot of published poems by other poets as stimulus for students in my writing workshops. Sometimes I use one of my own poems which I reckon has a particular usefulness both in showing the genesis of the poem and how imagery can be used to convey ideas and messages to readers. Here’s a recent unpublished example which I used to show how a Guardian feature on telling lies and a TV programme on archaeology, together with personal memories all came together for a poem where images and symbols play an important part:

Lies

All those lies – where are they, piled up in some attic box
or more likely shrivelled and dry, buried in layers of earth,
to be dug up by some archaeologist of lies in future years.

Here’s one she told as a teenager to be as clever as her sisters:
said she’d been to school in France for a whole term –
in Menton, with teachers who were nuns, speaking French.

She told her mother she was taking the train to Stonehenge -
actually she hitched, evaded the watchful eye of her brother
who was detailed to take her to the station. She lied to him

because he would have told her mother and her story
would have unravelled. She told friends she’d had sex
when she hadn’t, and her mother she hadn’t when she had.

And she goes on lying every day: I’m fine, she says,
when there are medical things she doesn’t want to talk about.
I’m good, she says, when she has just been stood up.

But then that’s how she spins her yarns, about herself,
about the characters who live in her head, who weave
their own stories – it’s the lie of the land she inhabits.

Workshops in Schools,
The Community and
at University

Schools:
Part of my work in schools is an inset session with teachers so that they can become writers themselves and therefore better teachers of writing One recent residency was for Junction Arts in two north-east Derbyshire secondary schools where a Year 8 class from each school wrote poems about their neighbourhood. I worked closely with a visual artist and an editor and together we produced a book of the students’ poems and pictures. The following website explains what we did and shows some of the pedagogy behind the residency: http://junctionarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/CommonGround-worksheets-medres-3.pdf

Adult and Community:
I run Creative Writing and Literature classes for the WEA and other organisations which want to get adults involved in writing. Over the years I’ve worked in secure units, residential homes, centres for the physically disabled and mentally challenged. I’ve done lots of workshops for Sheffield’s literary festival, Off the Shelf, and generally in Sheffield museums and galleries.
Referring to an adult workshop at Weston Park museum, Sheffield
"Thanks again for a lovely afternoon escaping from the snow. I'm telling all my friends what a good afternoon they sadly missed."

University:
I'm a tutor and assessor for the Open College of the Arts which offers distance learning degrees in the visual arts, music and creative writing. At the moment I'm tutoring several modules: Foundation Level Creative Writing; Level 1 Art of Poetry, and Writing Skills; Level 2 Poetry , creative non fiction and Life-Writing, and Short Fiction, and; and Level 3 writing your own prose or poetry projects. .
It's a great opportunity to help writers who can't attend a university course, but want to improve their writing and/or gain a degree in Creative Writing.

Editing and Reviewing:
I’m poetry editor for Jewish Renaissance which usually has a poetry page containing new poems by Jewish writers or on Jewish themes and reviews of new poetry books.
http://www.jewishrenaissance.org.uk/

I also contribute to the review section and the Poets-I-go-back-to section for The North published by the Poetry Business
http://www.poetrybusiness.co.uk/north-menu

I recently reviewed the Complete Poems of Jon Silkin published by Carcanet, a mammoth book and a mammoth task, but also a kind of mitzvah, if not a commandment from god, then a commandment from the gods of poetry.

Conference Papers
I like going to conferences (online) provided there is an organisation that will pay the fees. And I reckon writers who teach should get paid for because conferences are the best kind of CPD as well as being good places to meet other writers, sell your books and make contacts that might lead to residencies, readings and publication.