Cake Bread Street

Last weekend, I gatecrashed John Siddique's poetry workshop!

I walked around the gallery with the participants as they sought out their inspiration, took some photos and then listened to their excellent poems. I was very impressed.

Trisha Asworth's "Cake Bread Street" caught my attention so I persuaded her to let me film her reading it. Thanks Trisha!

Kirsty Young (Digital Marketing Assistant)

John Siddique's poetry workshop was no leisurely head-scratching session!

Odes On Lancashire Vases: Poetry Workshop with John Siddique – Day Two

I'm reckon I'm cheating already when I sidle into this workshop – it's Day Two of a weekend course, and I haven't attended Day One. I try to look inconspicuous as the real poets arrive, six of them, enthusiastic ladies all fired up with notepads full of yesterday's productivity. I take out my pen and chew on the end of it. My imposter status must be flashing red – not only have I snuck into the workshop for free (my secret password was blogger) but I'm not even a poet. I've got PROSE stamped on my forehead. And: TERRIFIED. Not to forget, of course, that I'm also a day late.

The mission this weekend is to create poetry based upon and inspired by Manchester Art Gallery's current exhibition, Exporting Beauty: Pilkington's Pottery and Tiles. The sessions are held in the Art Gallery itself, in a large workshop in their dedicated education space, and they're led by John Siddique, an immensely prolific poet, children's author, drama and fiction writer and workshop leader. John's fiction-writing past sets me at ease – which is, of course, exactly when he pounces and says that I must join in and write poetry, because otherwise, as he says, what would I have to blog about? Okay, that's a solid point and hardly unexpected, but I'm inexperienced and I'm talking poems plural – this is no leisurely head-scratching session, but an action-packed five hours in which we do exercise after exercise, writing four short poems, two longer ones and then a set of haiku, and sharing the results out loud with the group. I've done my share of writing classes, so I'm no stranger to the workshop set-up, but this is poetry – what if I don't rhyme? Yet by the time the Art Galllery officials knock on the door to evict us at four o'clock, I've quadrupled my previous lifetime record for verse. I feel triumphant and excited and more than a little tired. The other participants are rather less shell-shocked – poets to a woman, they've got this thing under control and I'm mightily impressed by how everybody deals with each brief in such different and interesting ways.

Without giving away John's trade secrets and telling you exactly what exercises we did, I'll say that we started off by talking about beauty, and how beauty can be found in unexpected places, and how, as poets or artists, our task is to observe and uncover that beauty and to then express it. Take a risk, he said, in your art and your expression, or else nothing will get made. The Pilkington exhibition, with its glazed ceramics, vases, brooches, tiles and ornaments, is startlingly beautiful and definitely inspirational – we're sent off to check it out, and when we come back he's got an assortments of writing exercises for us. We get limbered up as the session goes on, and it becomes easier to write spontaneously and to share our results with the group.

The setting is great too; we're all sitting clustered in a group around a makeshift desk made from four smaller tables pushed together, so there's no teacher-pupil hierarchy. Behind us is a glass wall overlooking Manchester's Chinese Quarter, and in the room with us are cupboards and boxes full of art equipment. We've got paper and pens and kettles and biscuits, but we're also free to walk around the galleries to write – there might be plenty of work to do, but the atmosphere is supportive and friendly and comfortable, and before long we're all laughing and chatting in between compositions. John tells us about different poetic forms, and how they incorporate the elements we're looking to examine – observation and reflection and the musicality of poetry. With the pottery exhibition and the rest of Manchester Art Gallery's collection within easy reach, and an enthusiastic and encouraging tutor egging us on, the afternoon couldn't be better designed for imaginative productivity.

The day passes quickly. I look back through my notepad and make quick scribbles next to a couple of my poetic efforts. That wasn't so bad, I thought, feeling far less daunted than I did on my way in this morning. John tells us to leave the work to simmer for a while before we type it up and edit it; I figure I'll leave it a month and see how it all looks in November. I sneak another look at the Pilkington vases on my way out. I may not have written an ode, but I've got at least one haiku I'm not afraid to call my own.

Valerie O'Riordan is a Manchester-based writer, and she blogs at www.not-exactly-true.blogspot.com

Rainy City Stories: Writing About Place

A creative writing workshop with David Gaffney

It would be appropriate to begin by writing about the place, but I feel this may mislead you. The weather was dull and wet, appropriate as it was a Rainy City Stories event, the venue itself, Friends Meeting House, was a little bland, white walls, brown carpet, a cluster of tables formed into one large one. None of this reflects the mood of the event. Torn-out pages from a Manchester road atlas lay scattered across the table for no other purpose than to add a bit of ambiance. Pretty soon we were all sat around the cluster of tables and people became the walls, people from a multitude of backgrounds - journalists, screen writers, wannabe novelists, academic writers, self publishers.

Writer David Gaffney, largely associated with the ‘flash fiction’ genre, sat at the head of the table with a check list of points for this flash course in writing about place. Our first exercise was to write down three things we noticed on our journey to the Friends Meeting House, and share our observations. A variety of things were mentioned: big issue sellers, filmy street pavements, the old disused Odeon, the hat shop opposite Albert Square. Most were somehow personal to the person; the places associated with memories or with things that interested them. We learned that in order to write convincingly about place we need to separate ourselves from the environment and put a character in our place. What would they see on that same journey?

Gaffney then proceeded to tell us an anecdote regarding a lady who sadly lost her sight. She asked her husband to describe the streets, what was happening on them, what could he see? He began “Well there’s a sign over there 10 to 1 on United vs Liverpool game. That pub has an offer, two main courses for a fiver,” and so on. She stopped him and said, “Now start again, only this time tell me what I would see.”

Gaffney spoke comprehensively on the subject, mentioning how other authors approached writing about place. How authors such as Ballard and Will Self would use psychogeography and algorithmic walking. He also showed a few examples of how not to write about place. Much to my personal pleasure one example was taken from Dan Brown’s The De Vinci Code . We discussed a passage and decided it was too heavy in information, it didn't tell us anything about the story or how the protagonist was seeing the surrounding section of Paris. Gaffney then informed us that it was what is known as a ‘research dump.’ It doesn’t really have a place in the text, but it does show that the author has researched.

Another ‘how not to...’ came from Bill Bryson. We all scowled when Gaffney spoke of how he dismissed our beloved city in print. His point was that everyone perceives things differently, so when writing about place try to explore the place yourself, do not rely on the words and opinions of a (unreliable and very very incredibly wrong) travel writer.

Our final task was to write a few sentences about a character and their mood within a place. Gaffney handed us a list of variables which we then selected and swapped with our neighbours. I was handed this combination of variables: a 20-year-old girl, who is an art student, situated in a snowy church yard, feeling happy. I had it easy, I was a 20-year-old art student not so long ago. Others found themselves writing about divorced 40-year-old taxi drivers in an art gallery or an unhappily married man on a Sunday afternoon in Eccles. We shared our flash fictions. It was great to see that in the space of ten minutes everyone had managed to conjure up a glimpse of a story and the beginnings of a character.

If you want to know how to write, well, I am afraid nobody can answer that. If you want to know how to write about place, David Gaffney can take you halfway there. There are no rules, but there are devices, tools and methods that can help you. The best way to write about place is to experience the place yourself and view it through another's eyes. That, and this little equation I wrote down: Story + Character + Place = Whole.

Now I am off to write a short fiction which I will the submit to rainycitystories.com

___

Mandi Goodier is a graphic designer and artist bookmaker.
www.stickittothemand.blogspot.com
www.mandgoodier.co.uk