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Beyond Form Creative Writing Courses

The Experimental Self Portrait 
Nora Nadjarian

Thursday January 20th, 2022
6-8:00pm (GMT) via Zoom
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In this workshop you will write about … yourself! After reading self-portrait poems/short fiction as starting-points, you will be prompted to ask questions about yourself. What do you look like and what is your personality? What images describe you and your identity? Delving into your past and picking memories which may be joyful, sad, painful or embarrassing, you will create your own experimental self-portraits, putting in or taking out, confessing or concealing as you choose. As you are guided to move back and forth between literal and figurative, you will find yourself writing material that is intriguing and surprising, even to yourself. Open to all genres and skill levels!
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Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer based in Cyprus. Her work has been placed or shortlisted in various international competitions and has appeared in magazines and anthologies, most recently in Europa 28: Writing by Women on the Future of Europe (Comma Press, 2020), the 2020 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology (UK) and in SAND journal (2021). She has recently led successful creative writing workshops for the Flash Fiction Festival (2019), the Wirral Poetry Festival and the Cheltenham Poetry Festival (2021).  Twitter: @NoraNadj

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Experimenting With. . . . .
Tawnya Selene Renelle

Starts Monday January 17th, 2022
6-8:00pm (GMT) via Zoom
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Experimenting With is a 6 week long course designed to spark your curiosity and get you exploring and experimenting in your writing. Each week you will have the opportunity to investigate a variety of themes, each one broad enough for every and all kinds of responses. This means each session is perfect for all skill levels and artists working in any medium.
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Experimenting with is a course about the ideas and topics that might inspire and shape your work. Each theme a possibility with potential for you to form unexpected connections in your writing.
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All registered attendees will have access to recordings of sessions, copies of exercises, and a variety of optional materials including book excerpts, videos, music, and more.
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You can sign up for all or just the weeks that most interest you and your project.

Week 1 Jan 17: Travel and Maps

Both through time, space, and around physical locations this week you’ll be exploring time travel, maps, and more.

Week 2 Jan 24: Desire

Does desire always have to be sexual or physical? You will play around and explore the potential of unexpected desires and the paths this may lead you to in your writing.

Week 3 Jan 31: History

What can we learn from what has come before? How does it shape and inspire your practice? Can you challenge history and find new and innovative ways to express it?

Week 4 Feb 7: Divination

The tarot, Pamela Coleman, watching telly and more will guide your writing this week as you tap into the art of divining for language and writing.

Week 5 Feb 14: Class

Is writing classist? How can you create and innovative with text to disrupt capitalism? Not easy questions to answer, but you will explore it all this week.

Week 6 Tuesday Feb 22nd*: Intertextuality

We are surrounded by a world full of writing, words, and image. How can you tap into this archive to hunt for text that adds to your work?
* Due to a previous commitment the class will be meeting on Tuesday this week.

Week 7 Feb 28: Optional Open Mic

A chance for you to share your work!

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Archiving, Museums, and The Experimental Memoir
 Tawnya Selene Renelle

Starts Wednesday January 19th

6-8:00pm (GMT) via Zoom

As individuals how do we curate, collect, collate, store, and exhibit the experiences that are our life? This 7 week course will ask you to enter the imagined archive of your life in order to find the materials for writing. It is designed to provide a new and experimental way into approaching personal narrative, memoir, and nonfiction, but is open to writers of all genres. If we use the ideas and practices of archiving and museums can you find new and unexpected ways to explore and experiment with the writing of your life? This course will culminate in a virtual and IRL exhibition and pamphlet.

​All registered attendees will have access to recordings of sessions, copies of exercises and a variety of optional materials including book excerpts, videos, music, and more.
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You are welcome to sign up for all or just the weeks that most interest you and your project.​

Week 1 Jan 19: Introductions

What do you know about museums and archival practice? What do you want to know? How will this lens shape your writing?

Week 2 Jan 26: The Body Archive

If many of our experiences can be described as embodied how can you archive, collect, and record these experiences?

Week 3 Thursday Feb 3rd*: Collecting and Memories

In what ways is the act of writing about your memories a practice of collecting? What can you collect from the archive of your experience?
* This week we will be meeting on Thursday due to a prior engagement.

Week 4 Feb 9: Missing Archives

How do you gather and create of an archive that doesn’t exist? Is it an imagined archive?
Can your writing fill in the gaps?

Week 5 Feb 16: The Object Archive

What are the objects you have curated to create the archive of yourself? What objects do you deem worthy of being housed in your museum?

Week 6 Feb 23: In The Museum

Now that you have your objects, how will you build your museums? In what ways is your writing a museum?

Week 7 Mar 2: Exhibiting Exhibitions

How is your writing the exhibit of your experiences? How do you construct the exhibit that works best for you?
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Virtual and IRL exhibition TBD.

REGISTER FOR COURSE

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