Living Life Twice

Author, Annie Dillard says she has to maintain in her head a running description of the present. She needs to call to attention what passes before her. I fully understand how important this rehearsal is to a writer. I am continually in the grip of word storms. They bounce around in my head. Phrases and ideas form and reform continually as I go about this critical pre-writing phase.  Much of this word play remains invisible until it is ready to reveal itself upon the page. Eventually these words, tumbled and reshaped, will spill onto the page and from there further refinement will be undertaken. Non writers will not appreciate this. They will not understand.    Every day the words I hear, the words I see and the words I absorb, sing in my head. Yesterday morning while enjoying breakfast a song delivered the following words. They stayed in my head all day. ‘Let me be close to you So, I can understand Let me be close to you Under your ceiling fan...’ Later in the morning I w...

  I am proud and committed word collector. I listen, I acquire and I use particular words quite mindfully. I am a logophile. I recall as a child frequently delving into dictionaries in search of new words. My parents frequently provoked my thinking with new words. I remain most grateful for their word conscious efforts during my formative years. I find beauty in old words. Beautifully exact words. Words rarely used. Words from English and other languages that ring in my ears and beg to be slotted into conversations, jotted down for safe keeping in my various notebooks in the hope that I might find a place for them among forthcoming words. Occasionally, I recall or hear a word or phrase that has fallen out of use and I attempt to revive it by sprinkling into my conversations, my writing. I recently heard the word   skedaddle   and felt compelled to use it. As a child, we frequently   skedaddled   from the scene. Particularly when something   nefarious  ...

In these times of social solitude, I  have been consciously delving back into books previously read. Pulling titles from the shelves and rediscovering treasure among the pages. It is proving a rich and rewarding experience. Stimulating thought, arousing curiosity and prompting action. Yesterday, it was Robert McFarlane’s ‘ Landmarks ’ published in 2016. A celebration of landscapes and language. McFarlane writes with fierce enthusiasm for the wonderful words residing in the natural world. He cites a 2012 national report concerning ‘Natural Childhood’ conducted in the UK concerning the lives of children between 1970 and 2010. The report noted that the area children were permitted to play unsupervised shrank by 90 % across that period. A dramatic downturn in free range play in untamed or wild places. Across successive generations the roaming radius of children has collapsed to mean just the house, the garden if one exists and the pavement in front of the house. Increasing...

I recently had the pleasure of conducting a workshop on Wordplay and its important role in growing writers. Here are some of the messages I was able to share with participants. Trust they add to your thinking around the teaching of writing... Wordplay is such an omnipotent thing. It is unavoidable. Conversation, songs, TV shows advertisements, literature , greeting cards, brochures magazines and newspapers all employ word play abundantly. Everywhere we go, it leaps out at us. In many schools however the study of words, has over time, been shrunken down to mean little more than reading and vocabulary knowledge. And yet, I still recall my teachers encouraging me to play with malapropisms, oxymorons, listen for tautology and wonder at the mystery of invented words in Lewis Carroll's poem 'Jabberwocky.' I recall the fun we had creating rhyming couplets and discovering palindromic words. At home, my father regularly engaged me in wordplay and riddles. There were a...

Quite some ago I purchased an old wooden box from shop called Quirky Interiors . the shop specializes mainly in antiques pieces. The inside of the box was divided into eighteen compartments, equal in size.  I knew the box had potential for my writing, but I was not completely sure how I would use it. So I waited patiently for inspiration.  Last week, the inspiration arrived! I decided I would use the box to encourage brave young poets to explore poetic possibilities. I labeled the box  'Poetic Possibilities.'  Into each of the compartments I placed words and phrases I harvested and typed onto cards. The words selected were from poems previously published.  Students were offered the challenge of selecting a card from the box. With that card, they were further challenged to use the word or words in a poem of their own creation. They could place the word or words anywhere within the poem- beginning, middle or end. They could also repeat the word/word...

Writers collect words. It is almost compulsive. I have always displayed a fascination for words.  Words deserve our respect. If we can get the right word in the right place, you give the reader a nudge and make then pay extra attention. I recall the word – skedaddle in ‘Odd Bird Out, by Helga Bansch. A story about a non conformist raven. The text is rich in its word use.  Skedaddle is a word I recall from my childhood, but I had neither seen or heard it for yonks (an indeterminate yet substantial period of time). I love the sound of skedaddle. I have been sharing it with young writers in the hope I can single handedly revive its use in common conversation. I vividly recall reading Colin Thiele’s wonderful short story ‘The Lock Out’ to a Grade 6 class and coming across the words ‘agog’ and ’gingerly.’   I wrote them on the board, and we discussed them and savoured the sounds they made. I encouraged my students to try and use them in their writing. In time th...

I am unashamedly, a word collector. I listen, I acquire and I use particular words. I recall as a child frequently delving into dictionaries in search of new words. Sometimes I recall or hear a word or phrase that has fallen out of use and I attempt to revive it by sprinkling into my conversations. I find beauty in old words. Words rarely used. Words from English and other languages that ring in my ears and beg to be slotted into conversations. I recently heard the word skedaddle and felt compelled to use it. As a kid, we frequently skedaddled from the scene. Particularly when something nefarious had happened. I loved words like scallywag , and rascal and how those words were ascribed to us when we were kids.  I had a thing about the word piffle a while back. So much so, I felt compelled to write a poem about piffle. That’s how compulsive, my word collecting has become. I love the word hullabaloo . It’s a word that makes me ponder. Just how loud is a hullabaloo ?...

It's fun to create new words and apply them to various situations. I can't imagine Lewis Carroll didn't have a smile on his face when writing his famous poem, Jabberwocky with its numerous invented words: `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe All mimsy were the borogoves,   And the mome raths outgrabe. Well, today's humble poem contains a single invented word. 'Neelywos' but I have written it how I imagine it should be written, and the poem was fun to write. Word play and fun and inventiveness are an integral part of poetry. So, dive in at the deep end and enjoy a little bit of serious silliness and encourage your student poets to follow your lead... Neelywos I neelywos a plumber But that became a drain I neelywos a pilot But I found it somewhat plain I neelywos an author Things didn’t work out write I neelywos an electrician Until I saw the light I neelywos a juggler But things got out of ...

As   a writer, I am constantly looking for ideas and inspiration. So naturally, I was excited when I came across this poetry pearl of an idea when checking Twitter last evening. It comes from Austin Kleon, http://www.austinkleon.com/newspaperblackout/    an Austin , Texas based artist and writer. Austin calls this method for composing poetry ‘Blackout Poetry.’ He uses newspaper pages to redact the original text with permanent markers to eliminate words not required, thus leaving only those words essential for creating the desired message.   Austin encourages fellow poets to dive right in and try blacking out and then sharing the resultant poems on his web site. This strategy works in a similar fashion to ‘found poems’ and ‘river poems’ in so much as it brings old pages back to life by using the words in an enterprising and creative way.   I  can imagine Blackout poems working really well with  the student writers I meet...

I have just finished presenting a series of workshops dealing with persuasive writing for all schools in Melbourne ’s Western Region.   National testing in writing in May will expect Australian students in Grades 3,5,7 and 9 to respond to a prompt using persuasive strategies and structures in their responses. It is important not to descend into the dark recesses of ‘test prep’ behaviours. I’m not an advocate for standardised testing. The validity of such assessments remains highly questionable and culturally biased. Such assessments tend to produce teaching that looks a lot like testing itself.     Standardised tests are however like global warming; they present as an inconvenient truth with strong political imperatives. For this reason I want students to feel comfortable about writing when placed in a testing situation. We must explain to students that this type of writing (test writing) is totally artificial and totally different from writing as we know. In o...