I'm going to crawl out from under my philosopher's stone and add my tangle
to the thread.  "Workshops Saved My Life!" Well, maybe not, but my stint on
the Creative Writing MA at  the U of British Columbia ( 68-70)  certainly
changed it. 
 
It got me out of the UK academy (by chance more than design) and plonked me
into a new environment, gave me time to write, plus a  tiny pittance   and a
focus on the actuality of writing. "I'm gonna thrash your Oxonian ass," said
Prof J Michael Yates, my supervisor, "if you don't  buy a fucking
TYPEWRITER!" I suppose that was an early  form of career development.

There were furious debates between West Coast Neo-Surrealists ( my faction
back then), Regional Ruralists, Black Mountaineers, and Concretists. There
was a seminar when I presented a poem intended as a vatic probe into deep
space-time, where I ended up howling with hysterical laughter along with the
rest of the room. There was a translation workshop where I made 123 mistakes
in ten pages of a text by Andre Breton.  There was the prompting to try new
forms of fabulating and signifying. There was a campus radio station where I
got to play with tape recorders.  There was a group script-writing project
that spawned a rhythm and blues show, which actually made me a living on
real radio for a while. There were marathon  readings - to full auditoria -
and much partying (with the occasional fight)  And of course, there were the
workshops, weekly psychodramas, a kind of cerebral  battle of the bands.
Energy levels were high.

In retrospect, the ritual of the workshop was less important than the  fact
that writing was meant to be central to one's existence and that people
actually read it and argued about it. One-to-one sessions were more useful,
especially with one tutor's more reflective  and laid-back explorations.
" I enjoy our talks, Paul. But I'm not sure if you  were  supposed to be my
student?" Assessment was flexible.  I was once assessed on Form in the Novel
in the Faculty Club, orally, over several large whiskies.

It was, of course, a time of cultural upheaval  and the Dept was relatively
new and raw, in relatively uncharted territory.  Iowa had been running for
some years but there was nothing like this in the UK.

There were odd paradoxes. When I interviewed Jackson McLow for local radio (
can you imagine interviewing him for local radio   now in the UK?)  it was
under the aegis of Warren Tallman in the English Dept, which had an uneasy
relationship with Creative Writing and its allegedly European  tendencies,
fostered by Yates. I think the usual campus politics were at work.

So what did it all mean? What became of us all? One of my contemporaries
stayed on and rose thru the ranks to become  Head of Dept and Poet Laureate
of Vancouver. A couple of others got teaching posts in other universities.
One guy became a successful radio producer. Another was last heard of
pushing a miracle diet food. One chap attempted to murder his wife. One  guy
went to jail in a dope bust, came out and wrote a successful memoir and
relaunched a journalistic career. Yates quit academia altogether and worked
as a prison guard for a few years ( not in the same joint)  He wrote a
memoir too. I blundered back to the UK and foolishly stuck my head in the
jaws of the further education system.

Sorry - this was meant to be a reasoned critique of all the points so
carefully made by Mairead, Jeffrey and co, not a stumble down memory lane.

UBC certainly helped me to to teach myself.  But there are no gurus, no
magic( or even magick) shortcuts.  You just have to lurch onwards and
sideways.