I also forgot to ask about the "hot chair" of life. Who is this from? If you
don't claim "The hot chair of life" for yourself, I am having itto pass off
as my own.
~
In relation to workshops Heaney speaks of "The shiny armour of moi" which he
has witnessed in many good poets, which in a workshop setting can
obliviously "crush and destroy the confidence of neophyte writers who are
overawed by the talent of others, not realising that 10 years down the line
from first starting - if you keep it up - you will have evolved to a very
different level of playing with language.
I recently held a series of "workshops" in the summer - about 10 in total.
They weren't workshops when I started them, merely somehewre me and some
poet pals could meet and spin our stuff to each other. I chanced across a
new art gallery run by recent graduates fromart school in Dublin, which was
as much a a drinking den where skint artists could show their work and drink
at a fraction of pub prices and smoke indoors. It was a great craic, as I
learned how to run a gathering of people. The irony was that I only started
them because I got barred from my weekly open mic (I have now kissed and
made up with the person who runs it) for getting us all barred from the Duke
pub on Grafton Street for general arty japes. The other irony being that
this pub prides itself on being a literary one, luring in tourists with
tales of Kavanagh and Behan, who would have been barred from there
themselves when they lived.
As for public writing, it is only in the last two months I have got online
indoors. Prior to that all I had known was writing in the company of others,
be it in the open access areas at college or in internet cafes. In a year or
two I will probably have a clearer understanding of how this impacted on my
own methods, as it must have done, but in a way it is all I have known.
|