Tuesday, September 11, 2007

WORKSHOPPING

My local writing group organised a day of workshops last Saturday. I had the greatest day; just being in a workshop, talking and writing is better than the best carrot cake you can imagine; better than whole bottles of Tia Maria, Drambui or 12yr old whisky! And a free lunch to boot. I felt sorry for some of the group who had to look after tables of books, hand-crafted cards and the tombola; some of them were bored out of their pencil cases. I was in my element; the tutor on my workshop was an American poet called Gerry Stewart…and she got a lot of work out of me. I left the table with a whole poem and the makings of another two on the same theme; which was living with my son, right now, this minute. This is the rough poem:

VISITING

Wires beating rhythms up walls, throbbing
Natalie Imbrulgia into speakers
out of tweakers – woofers.

Middle Child undivides my attention.
He’s cooking scrambled egg with cheese –
the maturity blares around my tongue.

Time sings here and my hands are soft
from squeezing T-shirts in his long bath.
He has nothing, and he shares it all with me.

I get high as a kite at writing sessions, especially if I come away with lots of work. I’ll let all this stew now in my notebook and see what happens. I usually can’t write about the present; I find myself waiting years to tell a story or use my life and experiences – that’s probably why most of my writing is about death and sex! Except this.

She talked about using themed verbs in our writing; I’d forgotten that my son was a musician so have just added those above on the day – I’ll need to work on them and find out more about tweakers and woofers so I can use them intelligently. Maybe I’ll interview him, yeah, that would be fun; I’m sure he’ll manage to slip a black hole in there somewhere – the thought of inviting him to SPEAK is terrifying.

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