I imagine, Liz, to an extent it's luck of the draw over here, in some areas
of the country there are probably more opportunities for support than
others. My own experience has been very mixed: personal support combined
with , dare I say it?, admiration from people on the ground combined with an
almost infuriating incomprehension of things that I and many of this list
take for as per se and given. While support from contacts made mainly
through e-mails (and one or two editors) has been a great boon in recent
years. Of all things, one needs to avoid a feeling of talking to oneself on
a virtual desert island.
I have amassed a great deal of experience of workshops over the last decade,
there's one, and non-academically supported, that is in effect built around
me ( I don't directly lead it though, well, only sometimes) but I try to
gently nudge people in new directions, while I've directly run another for -
phew - eight years. These things have evolved through combinations of
happenstance and good intentions and sometimes sheer effrontery on my part -
I could not imagine them within the academic system as far as I know it.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 9:12 PM
Subject: Re: Newbie
> In a message dated 1/26/02 5:28:11 GMT Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
> > . Many creative writing courses _are_
> > workshops. Certaily for some new to writing they help, & the people I
know
> > who do them insist that their students _read_.
>
> I am sure you are right from your end of the world..........I think the
> situation in Canada, from what I know of it, is much better than in Eng.
> More experimentation and openness...... My experience with the academic
> set-up here is that there is a terrible dreary consensus about what poetry
> is, and students are carefully taught not to disturb it. There will be
> notable exceptions of course (I am sure Matthew Francis is one!)
>
> Liz
>
|