Hiya Will and list

I found your comments on experiences of an undergrad creative writing student
very interesting. All the more so since I have been asked if I would be
interested in teaching writing and have been thinking about how this could be
done. Your post echoed some of the problems one of the writing lecturers
outlined to me, for example, students not attending lectures. I did once
attend lectures at Sydney University, but these were physics and mathematics
lectures and not wanting to be a scientist or engineer and with the help of
Fourier transformations and FORTRAN I f'ed off quick (dropped out) to become
an art college drop out before finally completing a degree in communication
at UTS in the late 1980's. UTS had no lectures or tutorials but four hour
seminars and was considered to be fairly ratbag non-traditional. In my
philosophy major I did Baudrillard in first year and Deleuze in second year,
for example. My writing major was very much like the innovative style of
creative writing now being taught in Canada, based on course outlines a
friend has sent. Much more art college style then university lectures and
tutorials, if you can follow my drift, here.

So I have no experience as an undergrad in the lecture and tutorial type of
teaching of creative writing (which is the type I would be expected to do)
and have to admit to some difficulty in wrapping my head around how this
could be done. All I can think is if I give a lecture series I will have to
make the lectures exciting so students will simply want to attend. (What I
call "wow factor".)

Another question I have is: how in the hell do you mark undergrad work in
creative writing? Why should this student be given a high distinction, that
one a credit and that one a mere pass? The only way I can figure a fail is by
total non-attendance and failure to complete projects. (Art college style is
usually just pass or fail without any grading, btw.)

Finally, an hons years in creative writing sounds like hell to me. I did do
the graduate hons year at UTS and creative writing was an option but I
avoided that opting instead for a non-traditional thesis using a popular
magazine format to present some fairly heavy theory and original research in
the media arts as required for the thesis, along with an eight thousand word
essay for each of the two coursework seminars. It seemed much easier then
trying to present some 30 or 40 thousand words of creative writing since the
idea was to get a first class which meant working your butt off trying to
scrape in straight high distinctions. So how do you manage to do a creative
writing hons is my question here.

What I would like to hear more about is people's experiences of being
an undergrad in creative writing degrees and also what those who teach
writing at university level have to say. (So far the most teaching I have
done at uni level is give guest lectures which were successful so I was told,
despite the silent blank faces on my student audience. Maybe silent blank
faces on students is a measure of success?????)


best wishes and all

Chris Jones

(PS Everyone of the those bloody pieces of reading set for undergrads has to
be read and known very well by the lecturer. Being a lecturer in writing
sounds like hard work, since you have to write and rehearse each lecture on
top of being very familiar with the set texts and ready for questions, I
assume. )







 Fri, 25 Jan 2002 20:27, you wrote:
> welcome Petrova!
>
> i'm in the middle of an arts degree at Melbourne University, and will
> likely do Creative Writing honours in fourth year.
>
> the first creative writing subject i did was a prerequisite. it was hugely
> popular. the lecture hall saw people crowding in the aisles and scrawling
> notes. i went to a couple of lectures, felt lonely, then angry when mobile
> phones started buzzing away.
>
> frankly i only recall a few things from lectures. the first piece of
> 'advice' we got was that 'it helps your writing to have had a life of
> crisis'. seriously.
>
> there was one great lecture by John Mateer, an Australian poet, who read
> some sprawling pieces and then talked about Afrikaans poetry. but in total
> i think i went to 4 lectures.
>
> tutorials were much more cordial, usually involving about 10 people. i
> remember they were held at about 9am in this big room with dark corners.
> everyone was so QUIET. the tutor was a nice, soft-spoken guy. i went to
> every tutorial, including one or two which were empty. the tutor would talk
> to me about Australian poetry for the allotted 2 hours. that was fun.
>
> the course reading pack was immense and cost about 40 dollars. there's no
> way anyone could've digested it all in one semester. the range of great
> stuff in it (i'm still ploughing through it) deserves years of treatment.
>
> that course was taken in first year uni. second year saw me take on two
> creative writing subjects. the first, 'creative writing 2', was nearly
> exactly the same as the first year subject, only without lectures. instead
> we had 2 and a half hour seminars in groups of about 25. throughout the
> semester, each student had about an hour total devoted to his/her's
> submitted work. the rest of the time was spent reading other people's work,
> or doing class exercises, or reading from the even bigger second-year
> course reading pack. i can barely remember the class exercises. i
> distinctly remember experiencing a kind of anxious nausea during these
> seminars. again, everyone was so bloody QUIET.
>
> the reading pack was, though, great. most notable was an amazing essay by
> John Forbes on O'Hara's 'In Memory of My Feelings'. this essay's famous for
> making the poem even more complex than it is. though compared to some of
> the tedious seminar deliberations it was challenging and provocative.
>
> during the same semester i took a course called 'Writing Poetry', taught by
> another aussie poet, Chris Wallace-Crabbe. not really sure what to make of
> that course. it was purely a workshopping course - we didn't read anything
> except other student's work. most people loved it because everyone's work
> got plenty of exposure each week. i was in a seminar group of about 20. his
> comments on poems were rarely threatening. indeed he seemed inclined to let
> the students have the final say on most poems.
>
> no course reading pack was set for that class. i found myself during many
> seminars just wishing that the teacher would throw out some kind of
> spirited opinion, the kind of flourish that his beautifully erudite air
> promised. instead he was content to sit back and comment every now and
> then. the bunch of us were, again, generally very quiet.
>
> i'm not sure if i've really learnt much at all from the 3 above-mentioned
> subjects. i guess i'm the kind of student who needs harsh directives, and
> none were really forthcoming. the most thrilling hour of my uni life thus
> far was a private session with John Mateer. i showed him one of my pieces
> and he went about questioning every fundamental premise of the poem. i
> walked out shaking and ran straight to the library. it worked wonders.
>
> forgive me if i've dragged on. if you've any specific questions, ask away.
> i'm a muddled 20-year old so expect more ambivalent ramblings.
>
> cheers
>
> will
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Petrova <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Friday, 25 January 2002 12:14
> Subject: Newbie
>
> >Hello,
> >
> > I joined this list a few weeks ago, and I just wanted to say how
> >much I've been enriched by the poems and discussion. Thank you all for
> >sharing! I'm a novice myself - I've written a few poems, mostly lyrical
>
> and
>
> >certainly not up to the quality of those I've read here. But I'm eager to
> >learn and improve.
> > What I wanted to ask is, could anyone offer any advice about creative
> >writing courses? I know that several universities offer a poetry strand at
> >MA level, and I would love to study contemporary poetry in depth.
> >
> > Thanks
> > Petrova