TheFED Writing Festival 2015

 

Saturday 24th October

Faraday House

(48-51 Old Gloucester Street, Holborn, London, WC1N 3AE)

 

Were you there?

Please send your photos, recordings, writing, suggestions etc.

to fedonline1@gmail.com

 

 

The Writing

 

A Strange Place

Come up with a group of people who have all just woke up to find themselves in a strange place, completely unfamiliar to them. 

It consider be a house or mansion or forest.

Imagine they find each other and wonder where they are, only to be found by someone or something else soon after.

What would they see?  What would they say?

Sue Truman

 

From The Second Workshop

There's is something developing.

I wore my hairclip.

I am stand on the green head.  I am stand on hill top.

I wore a dress.  I wore a ring and we were.

You go out in a rain.  Were Class.

My gran did not want me be I marrying Jim in the Registry Office.

The hair clip on cardboard.

Sue Truman

 

Duranty (after Edgar Degas, 1879)

Oh Dear
Not what I was
Promised: M. Degas
Will never eat lunch in Paris
Again.

Brian Docherty

 

Interior At Paddington (after Lucian Freud, 1951)

My friend Harry poses as if in a dream,
would not be happy in the nightmares
my good friend Mr Bacon indulges in.

This is Paddington, not Knightsbridge,
the young man staring up at this window
is not my intimate friend from last night.

I often talk to Yucca trees, they whisper
to me in Spanish of the light in New Mexico,
and yes, I know what Grandad would think.

Why do you think patients lay on that couch
draped with kilims & flanked by Juju masks?
Whose dream world was that? Personally

I’ve always preferred Melanie Klein’s work;
I never saw the Old Man at work, and as for
Herr Professor Jung, he is simply cuckoo.

Francis Bacon has that side of the street
well under control; he is not the Irish wild
man you imagine; he is gentle & kind,

and we respect each other’s work. Really.
I never go to the Colony Club & if we meet
in a restaurant, let our acolytes duke it out.

Harry is not about to punch this Yucca or hurl
through the window in a display of artistic
temperament, I will not invite the young man

up for lunch or to be my model. He is not my type,
nor will the light flatter him. The light says
Take your coat off & get to work.

Brian Docherty

 

Oasis In The Bad Lands (after Edward S. Curtis, 1900)

I tell you;
                 in time to come
someone will remember us.  (Sappho, Fragment 6)  

I will enjoy
                   this water while
it and we are here.

My good friend
                          Chief Red Hawk,
doesn’t know it yet

but his day
                   is done; his rifle
made by Speaks With Forked Tongue

is useless here.
                         He is brave,
& fearless, and the last free

Indian here.
                    He looks out
on his ancestors’ homeland.

He imagines
                     he looks into
the future; it is his past.

Soon, strangers
                          will arrive from
places he cannot imagine.

They are hard,
                         they are cold,
will not respect his claims.

Brian Docherty

 

Button 1

I fell off a shirt or Laura Ashley dress,
lost or abandoned, left under the bed.

I hope I am not forgotten
or replaced by another button

that does not match the rest
or maybe the buttonhole was left

lonely and the garment never fitted
properly again, got too tight

or frayed in a noticeable spot
then donated to Cancer Research

or cut up and used as dusters,
or relegated to gardening togs.

I do not approve of wearers
who live carelessly or change

their clothes without thinking
of the seamstress in Bangladesh

or China who transmits their skill
and maybe their love & hopes

for a different life, maybe moving
to Lahore, London or Shanghai

living that life of disposable income.
Anything is possible with the right disguise.

Brian Docherty

 

Button 2

You think I am identical
to every black button ever made,

but I am not, we are not all
the same, if you don’t see the

subtleties, just pick a few of us
up next time you have lost one.

Sort through the box carefully,
pick us up, hold us to the light,

one by one till you find the right
one to do the job & make your shirt

dress or coat presentable again;
do it right and no-one except

your spouse, partner or mother
will notice and approve.

Putting the right button on the wrong
garment might affect peoples’ opinion.

I was custom made for one particular
shirt, and resent being transferred

to an inferior garment. I am not out
of place, but my new home will attract

the wrong sort of attention from people
who could not afford the original.

Brian Docherty

 

Button 3

In my world, my real world,
not the one you imagine I inhabit,

I know my heritage & history,
which does not include being

sewn onto a shirt as if I was
that shirts property, to be fingered,

rubbed against cloth or other
garments, noticed, if at all,

as a minor part of that shirt,
to be replaced as necessary.

You do not even know my name,
or imagine a future that does not

include you or your wardrobe
but I know what holds my future,

and what my next life will be,
not as a small button on a human’s

shirt, but as something or maybe
someone superior, a pattern

my Creator has designed for me.
I will be perfect and perfectly

situated in my next life; not on
this miserable little world.    

Brian Docherty

 

A Salute from The Bread is Rising Poetry Collective to TheFED and Fedfest 2015

Warmest greetings to the power of poetry
manifest in world solidarity
A salute to consciousness transcontinental
from The Bread is Rising Poetry Collective
in our 20th anniversary year
spreading poetic truth
with strong allies
always
going
forward

Angel Martinez

 

The Workshops

 

A Strange Place - Michael Bungay

Come up with a group of people who have all just suddenly woken up to find themselves in a strange place completely unfamiliar to them. It could be a house or a mansion or a forest or anything that one would consider strange and unfamiliar. Imagine they find each other and wonder where they are only to be found by someone or something else soon after. What would they see? What would they say? What would they do? What would come to find them? Would it be an animal or a person or another group of people or animals? Would whatever finds them be friendly? Or would they be in trouble? My example is my alter-ego finding himself in a lonely mountain house in the French Alps while on a skiing trip but the criteria already specified is yours to decide how to build upon.

 

REwriting The Rules - Brian Docherty

Another look at a Workshop Classic; The Rules is an exercise / kickstart using artwork (photos, postcards, paintings,) to evoke another world or parallel universe where things might be a little different. The aim is to generate a first person monologue (poem or prose) which will illustrate some aspect of this situation. This exercise is useful for anyone wanting to write a sequence, and it comes with a Handout to read on the space shuttle home.

 

Thoughtful Words - Chris Munt

This workshop provides an opportunity to use Mindfulness as a pathway to write creatively. You will be given an overview of what exactly mindfulness is and what it isn’t, and then you will engage with a couple of exercises to get you ‘in the moment’.

After this you will then be invited to write something on the subject of ‘Thoughtful Moments’. I am an experienced writer and practice mindfulness techniques on a regular basis. I very much look forward to meeting you on the day and working co-creatively with you.

 

Poetry Is Still 'Ard - Dave Chambers

A poem is really a story. Like The Odyssey, or Gilgamesh. But those two are exceptional, novels in a poem. Most of us write shorter poems, and short stories too. And the thing about a good short story is brevity. Getting the story told without too much waffling on about how beautiful, terrible, wonderful, scary everything is, just telling the story can work like a charm. And a Poem is supposed to be charming! So let's be brief, make every word worth it's place!

 

An Unusual Trinity - Roy & Lucia Birch

In 2006 Lucia and I combined Meditation, Creative Writing, and Reiki, in that order, in what proved to be a powerful healing modality. During the last nine years we have employed it to considerably positive therapeutic effect in a range of situations.

If you would like to savour the beneficial effects of this gently powerful therapeutic experience, please join our workshop. We would love to have your company.

 

A study of unusual proverbs, unifying diverse cultures,
   with the aim of stimulating the creation of your own and developing writing around them - Louise Glasscoe

In this workshop we’ll be considering existing proverbs which express the universal truths deriving from human experience; how they resonate with widely different cultures and, in some cases, how quirkily they have been expressed. Using prompts this workshop will stimulate you to create your own proverbs and imagine ways of incorporating your own, or existing proverbs, into your writing; or develop a piece of writing around them.

For example, proverbs on the subject of flattery, expressed by different cultures: Flattery is sweet food to those who can swallow it. Danish; He who praises me on all occasions is a fool who despises me or a knave who wishes to cheat me. Chinese; Flattery is like friendship in show but not in fruit. Socrates; Scratch people where they itch. French; A flatterer has water in one hand and fire in the other. German; Show me a poor man and I’ll show you a flatterer. Portuguese; Who paints me before, blackens me behind. Italian; Trust not the flatterer: in the days of sunshine he will give three pounds of butter, and in thy need deny thee a crust of bread. Chinese.

 

The Smallest Things - Developing Imagination & Narrative - Andrew Henry Smith

A poetry workshop to fire the imagination

Working from the smallest, the seemingly insignificant, infinitesimal, tiniest things we will develop a story to rival the greatest grand narratives of history, science & philosophy in terms of revealing the essential truths of existence or we might not. The subjects of ‘quantum theory’ are the smallest things in the universe and examination of the ‘quantum’ world is teaching science entirely new ideas about the very nature of reality.

BUT we don’t want to look at thing quite that small – NO – we want to take a step back a little to look at those small things that we have overlooked in our rush to find those big ideas and grand themes, thinking that only they should be the subject of our poetry. From our investigation of these small things we might even tell the biggest stories of the universe – even if it is only piece by piece and one piece at a time.

Be prepared to take risks and have some fun!

 

Overcoming Writer's Block - John Malcomson

Have you ever felt you should be doing some writing but somehow just can't? Whether you should be working on your big, bestselling blockbuster or you feel the urge to express yourself in writing but find you are unable to get down to actually doing it, this workshop will help you overcome the dreaded Writer's Block, the situation where you feel unable to do some writing when you know you should be.

We will do some writing exercises and also look at developing skills to help you sit down and write when you know you should be. At the end of the workshop it is hoped you will have some writing to take away, or if you are brave enough even share with others at the Celebratory Reading, as well as having developed techniques to beat the so-called Writer's Block.