Playing ‘Consequences’ at Writing Retreats and Workshops

Do you remember playing ‘Consequences’ as a child, or maybe even more recently? In case not, and briefly: each player is given a sheet of paper, and everyone writes down the first line of a story. They then fold the paper over so their words cannot be seen and pass the paper on to the next/another player who writes the second line of their story … and so it continues until a decision is made to read the stories out. There are variations, which are a bit more prescriptive with reference to characters or events for example. There’s a picture version too; the first person draws a head, the next the top part of the torso and so on until the knees and toes are reached and the ‘person’ is completed. Not surprisingly it’s also possible now to play the game online. But the paper and pen ‘let’s create a free-style story’ is the version I remember playing myself.

At a Creative Writing Workshop I facilitated at the Fish Factory Arts Space in Penryn, Cornwall, towards the end of last year I decided to adapt the ‘Consequences’ game I remember as an warm up exercise. I asked participants to:

•      Write a little about yourself: For example, your interests, job, passions, favourite place, food, hobby…

Fold and pass on.

•      Write a couple of sentences about you motivations for coming to the workshops and your hopes for this evening…

Fold and pass on

•      Write or paraphrase a line or two from a favourite book, poem, film, song…

Fold and pass on. Reveal and read.

It worked quite well as an icebreaker and a few participants read out the 'story' in front of them before we moved on to other exercises. I wasn’t completely satisfied though and felt that more might be done with the game.

A few weeks ago I facilitated an Academic Writing Retreat for Medical Education colleagues at the University of Plymouth. I always include two or three ‘creative interludes’ in more traditional writing retreats and have found these to be useful in a number of ways; not least in pausing from academic writing convention and shaking up the writing muscles a little.  Mid-afternoon on the first day of two the interlude was a game of ‘Consequences’. This time the instructions were a little different. Thus:

Write about three aspects of your academic story. After completing each part fold the paper over and pass to someone else (not necessarily the person next to you).

 

•      Your job title, or a previous one. 

•      A sentence or two on your current role. 

•     A short paragraph; three or four sentences, on what you are working on today (and tomorrow) …

Next I asked participants to pass on once more before revealing the story of the composite person in front of  them. 

There was a second part to the exercise this time. Thus: 

In EIGHT MINUTES Write something, for a non-academic audience, about the ‘story’ in front of you…

•  a press release
• a review
• a piece of fiction/poem/song
• OR?

The results were amazing and included an advert for a wellness retreat as well as songs, poems and more. Here is a Rap written by my friend and colleague Tracey Collett:

AN ODE TO SCHOLARSHIP

I’m an AP* in a Medical School.

I teach Anatomy,

from the toes to the head.

But that’s not all.

No I’m a super human being.

I’m the roots of the Anatomy scene.

IN-CLU-SI-VI-TY,

is the name of my game.

TECHNOLOGY,

things will not remain the same.

 

I’m an AP in a Medical School.

I’ve got an MD.

I’m an AP in a Medical School.

I’ve got an MD.

But, it hasn’t gone to my head.

 

I’m thinking about the humans that I see

Working and developing a new Philosophy.

What do students value?

How do students learn?

My work is going to lead to an educational turn.

 

This is an ode to the scholarly ship.

It’s leading to change and it’s really the pip.

*AP – Associate Professor

 

A week later towards the end of a Creative Writing Workshop with a group of community food researchers (again in Plymouth), I asked participants to respond to the following (again hiding their writing from view before passing the paper on to another person in the room), this time introducing drawing, sketching, time-lines and body maps alongside words:

•  A fact about you that people here might not know about. 
•  A sentence or two/image from one of your pieces today. 
•  A short paragraph or pictorial representation of –  your particular passions and concerns with reference to the issues we are focusing on today (or  not).
• PASS ON and REVEAL. 

 And then: 

Produce something (using words and/or images) for a non-academic audience, about the ‘story’ in front of you…

• a pen portrait
• an I-poem / a life/body map 
• a piece of fiction/poem/song

 

Again the results were wonderful, creative, thought provoking, emotionally evocative.

 

 ***

Playing ‘Consequences’, and playing with the idea of ‘Consequences’, has reminded me yet again how much fun creative writing/working can be and that the possibilities of what we might do and how we might do it are endless. Why not get a group of friends together and have a go…

 Creative Imaginings of Space and Place at Fish Factory Art Space, Penryn 

I've very much wanted to get involved in more local community arts events in or close to my home town of Falmouth and I'm very grateful to the Fish Factory Art Space, Penryn, Cornwall for helping me achieve this. On Sunday 27th October 2024 I facilitated a creative writing workshop focusing on Space and Place. Amongst other exercises we played about with free writing, responded to pictorial prompts, proverbs and song titles and spent some time imagining the connections and the differences between space(s) and place(s). As well as writing there was quite a lot of (focused) chatting and sharing and a bit of art work too. Some wonderful pieces were produced. 

Personally I enjoyed the afternoon enormously and I'm really looking forward to the next workshop I'm running on the 27th of November. This one is aimed specifically at academics and activists. You can sign up here if you're local to the area and interested (and be sure to check out all the other great events and exhibitions at the Fish Factory) https://www.fishfactoryarts.space/

One other lovely thing has been seeing posters advertising the workshops all through the town; in arts shops and bakeries, even on the counter of a cafe and pasty shop that I often pop into. . 

Writing Found Poems

I sometimes include Found Poetry in my Creative Writing Workshops and (Creative) Academic Writing Retreats. Found poetry/poems is a great way to pay with existing texts and the source can come from anywhere; newspaper articles, letters, books, online sites, research data and more. In my sessions I sometimes ask participants to go back to something that they have written earlier in the session with me to create a poem or two.

Others who advocate the practice consider the Found Poem to be the literary equivalent of a collage and some poets have incorporated snippets of found texts into larger poems. Poets well known for writing Found Poetry include Charles Reznikoff, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Click on the link below to read an interesting example of a Found Poem focusing on patient experience. Created by Fiona Hamilton the text is taken from quotes from qualitative interviews https://bjgp.org/content/72/724/538

The twelve word Found Poem is one of my favourites. I am grateful to Professor Ceri Morgan (a researcher-practitioner who works on literary geographies, place-writing and participatory arts)  who introduced me to this at a creative writing workshop she led at a conference I attended at Keele University. Prof Morgan devised this version for Ben Anderson's AHRC-funded project, 'Planned Creativity'. The format goes:

 

WORD

WORD WORD

WORD WORD WORD

WORD WORD WORD

WORD WORD

WORD

Here are a couple of my own. The first is written from one of three conference papers I gave in the summer the title of which was Sociable Solitude: exploring some alternative ways of being and moving with others:

 

Solitude,

not loneliness.

Connections, relationships, networks

kindness, care, love.

Creativity, freedom.

Imaginations.

 

And the second from a paper entitled The Self and Sensation: some thoughts on older women and masturbation (I’m nothing if not eclectic). I cheated a bit with this one and made it thirteen words (but why not).

 

Taboo.

(To) avoid intimacy?

Substitute? Transgressive? Unruly?

Satisfaction. Pleasure. Healthy.

Positive images.

Real.

 

Why not have a go at writing some of your own Found Poetry, either from other pieces you have written or from the back of a cereal packet or a train ticket, or  ….

An Activist Now

 

As readers of my blog will know when I run a Creative Writing for Academics event I always try to write at least one thing myself. Mostly my time is spent introducing,  timing and discussing the exercises I set but I usually mange to at least begin a piece of writing. Last week I had the pleasure of attending the British Sociological Association, Auto/Biography Study Group 2024 summer conference (10^th-12^th July) and in addition to presenting a paper I ran a workshop entitled Writing Through, and Out of, Disappointments and Dissonances. ‘Disappointments and Dissonances’ was the theme of the conference. From a free-writing starter exercise I asked participants to write something including at least eight words included in the free-writing of others. I wrote a poem (with my chosen words highlighted in bold), inspired by friend and colleague Christine Lewis’ wonderful paper Tokitae: turning a life of disappointments and dissonances into joy.

 

An Activist Now

A coffee in hand,

I’m on my way.

 

Trying to cut out the noise,

Yet embrace the emotions.

I’m on my way.

 

So much evidence.

But still SO many questions.

I’m on my way.

 

An activist now,

Who’d have thought it.

I’m on my way.

 

A reaction to the loss.

A need to search for meaning.

An attempt to find some healing.

 

It might take some time but,

I’m on my way.

And that, is enough for now.

 

Exercises such as this both stimulate the writing muscles and encourage us to perhaps write in different ways, outside of the traditionally academic, which can help not least in reaching and engaging wider audiences. Following a recent Academic Writing Retreat (to which participants bring their own projects to work on but within which I include two or three short ‘creative interludes’ each day) one participant said:

I loved the creative writing exercises! I was actually longing for them and planned my writing/work so that a section would be finished in time for the next one. My creative juices are overflowing at the moment.

It is worth noting too that these exercises are guides rather than prescribed activities which participants might adapt or twist to their own particular interests and concerns.

Creativity rules!

#CreativeAcademicCoaching

www.gayle-letherby.co.uk

FRUIT and VEG 

I When it comes to writing fiction, I enjoy experimenting with different genres. Here are two linked stories that I hope you'll find amusing. 

In a Stew

Tallulah, like most turnips, is a rather sensitive soul. Root vegetables in general have an unfair reputation as being somewhat hard, knobbly, and unfeeling but in reality their main aim is to fulfil. Sure an addition of pepper, coriander or similar can spice things up somewhat but they like nothing better than to bring a smile by adding a bit of colour to a roast or warming a person’s day as part of a comforting soup. Tallulah’s particular distress today, which she is sharing in a trembling voice, is caused by the jokes made at her and her sisters’ expense following the ‘cherish turnips, forget tomatoes’ comments made by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. To be fair Tanya tomato and family aren’t that chuffed either. Not only do they constantly have to deal with the ‘but you’re a fruit really’ comments from those who really should know better (excluding of course Casper cucumber (who has the same problem himself, although a little less often) and Lola lettuce, who they know truly value any tomatoes’ contribution to a dish) but now this. ‘Forget tomatoes’ indeed! Whether the current UK shortage is down to the weather or Brexit or both, it’s certainly upsetting enough to give anyone with a heart the pip. Surely this, Tanya demands, should be the focus of concern today?

Chairing his first local Allotment Dwellers meeting, Oliver onion is beginning to sweat a little. Why oh why did this controversy have to happen at the beginning of his watch? As if taking over from Alicia avocado with her on trend popularity, her air of exoticism and her greenhouse superiority, hasn't been bad enough.

‘Order, order, meeting to order’, Oliver cries, but to no avail as tensions rise and the roots and salads thrown insults, and even a few poor peas, at each other.

Desperately Oliver looks around for help. The cabbages, caulis and sprouts are no use given their rather sad ostracization due to the faint farty smell that always lingers over them. The beans and sweetcorns aren’t going to be any help either; too busy discussing amongst themselves their personal preference of meat and fish accompaniments or not. And as for the courgettes. They really don’t know what all the fuss is about given that they’re themselves forever having to cope with the ‘but when is a courgette not a courgette?’ / ‘When it’s a marrow’, jibe.

Then just when he’s thinking that multiple layers or not he’s really not up to the job a saviour comes to Oliver’s rescue. Having followed the debate (or rather the unruly ratatouille of a meeting) thus far with a mixture of amusement and mild irritation Petunia potato decides it’s time to do her usual and brings some order to proceedings. Respected for her versatility and her ability to complete so many dishes and please so many palates the other allotment dwellers always listen when she speaks. Having cleared her throat - that’s all it takes for silence (after Roland radish nudges and shushes Cecily celeriac that is) - she begins.

‘Now come on everyone, show some solidarity. For after all we’re all in this together. We each bring something to the table, to the plate, to the bowl. We’re all somebody’s favourite individually (well maybe not the parsnips, sorry guys) and in our various groups we make delicious combinations. Let’s not spoil what we offer – our ability to inspire cooks and delight eaters the world over – by falling out amongst ourselves.’

At this, barring a bit of grumbling, peace is restored, for now at least. Giving up any hope of getting through the original agenda (which included important issues such as the (over) use of cloches and tunnels and the space needed for kale and rhubarb planting) Oliver brings the meeting to an end. As dusk falls and he, along with most of the other vegetables (the leeks are particularly poor sleepers), dozes off for the night, he dreams of future meetings where his own particular strength and flavour is valued for what it is.

***

Fruit Basket 

It’s Oliver onion’s second allotment meeting as chair and already it’s proving to be as sticky as the last one. This evening’s bone of contention (and they’re only just got through the Minutes and Item’s Arising) is the new greenhouse which has well and truly upset the applecart in terms of the previous good relationship between the veggies and the fruit. The tomatoes expected full occupation of the rather grand structure, but the fruits, especially the peaches and the melons, have other ideas. Yes, yes, I appreciate that everyone knows that technically tomatoes are fruit too but they self-identify as vegetables which must of course be respected.

Anyway, back to the argument.

‘Bloomin self-entitled tomatoes’, mumbles Osaf orange, ‘always acting as if life is a bowl of cherries just for them’.

‘Yeah, but full of pips for the rest of us’, adds Aaron a little more loudly. Aaron isn’t a bad apple by any means, but he likes a bit of stir.

‘What a lemon’, whispers Sasha strawberry to her friend Ruby red current and the cherry tree in the corner of the allotment shakes so much that those sitting underneath are showered with pink blossom.

Oliver is sweating again, all his layers feeling uncomfortably damp, as the oranges, apples and pears side with the peaches and melons (the berries being much less partisan), and the tomatoes, feeling increasingly isolated, grow angrier and angrier. If they get any redder additives will be suspected and the usual route to salad, sauce and soup will be completely off the table.

‘Come on guys’, he tries ‘there must be a way out of this, surely?’

But nobody is listening to him. Looking around desperately for some help Oliver catches one of the eyes of Patrick potato who he was up against for the job of allotment chair. They’ll both be in hot water soon enough without all this hassle and Oliver feels sure that on reflection Patrick holds no sour grapes and is more than happy to have lost the vote. A plum assignment IT IS NOT. Patrick’s mother Petunia, a wise and well respected root, has left for pastures, well more accurately palates, new but Patrick is a chip of the old block and he tries hard to come to Oliver’s rescue.

So full are they of indignation though, the fruits and the tomatoes don’t give a fig. ‘Bananas, absolutely bananas, the lot of them’, thinks Patrick, giving up.

Seeing the need for action and pulling himself up to his full height Ronnie rhubarb clears his throat, takes a deep breath and whistles loudly.  

‘Right, just stop it, stop it now’, says Ronnie commandingly. Rhubarb are generally a shy lot, hiding most of the time, as they do, under their leaves, so this intervention shocks everyone into silence.  ‘Enough’, Ronnie continues. ‘Last month it was the toms and the turnips and now it’s the toms and the fruit.’ ‘Yes, yes I know’, he says in exasperation as, one particularly pedantic beetroot opens their mouth to correct the tomato classification.

Clearing his throat Ronnie tries again. ‘There must be a solution going forward’, he begins, ‘so why don’t we form a few breakout groups, discuss the options and bring our ideas back to the bedding patch’. Ronnie had known the copy of ‘How to Speak Management’ that the human allotment worker had left in the shed would come in handy sooner or later. And for a while Ronnie’s suggestion seems to work with small clusters of fruit and veg chatting, mostly, amicably. The discussion is largely about other things, such as growing hopes for the season and the merits of organic fertilizer, rather than who should have the rights to the greenhouse, but still, at least things seem a bit less fraught now.  

A few minutes on and Sasha, clearly the nominated spokesberry for her group, speaks out. ‘The thing is…’, and although her voice is quiet everyone stops to listen, so luscious looking a fruit is Sasha (only a dollop of cream could make her more beautiful). ‘The thing is, couldn’t the peaches, the melons and the tomatoes just share the greenhouse?’ Seeing a few nods and encouraging smiles she continues; ‘there’s actually quite a bit of space and wouldn’t the cocktail of colour be glorious if there was joint occupation.’

Monica melon and Peggy peach smile at each other. ‘That’s sweet Sasha’, says Monica, ‘and so simple and sensible an idea, thank you.’

Looking towards the tomatoes Oliver sees that Tallulah, Tarquin and the rest look happy enough too. Sighing with relief he moves on at last to the second main agenda item bracing himself for another lively discussion, this time about the status of the low hanging fruit.

***

NB: I know I’ve mixed the seasons/seasonal produce in both of these stories. Please forgive me.

 

Using Eight Words (AGAIN)

A couple of days ago I had the privilege of facilitating a creative writing workshop for PhD students in the Public Health, Policy, and Systems Department at the University of Liverpool. Exercises included writing pieces (e.g. fiction, memoir, lyrics, scripts and so on) from pictorial prompts and with the intention to challenge 'grand narratives' (in research and more generally). The session also included some creative editing; which involved not just the cutting of words but also changes of genre, of mood, of time etc. 

The second writing task - ‘chose eight words from those chosen by others and….’ - followed the first exercise which involved each person picking out four words from a warm-up eight minutes of free-writing. This generated a whole bunch of great single words; analysis, loss, supposed, diseases, bland, basil (to list just a very few), and a few linked words, including ‘I am very lost’ and ‘keep going’ which participants put together, in a variety of extremely interesting ways, to write stories and poems and more.

As at other such events I joined in with this exercise. Here's what I wrote on Thursday, with my (more than) eight words, highlighted: 

I love food, I love preparing and cooking food for others too. I don’t really follow recipes much except perhaps when I have a guest who I’m not used to cooking for and I’m anxious I might produce something less than edible, something less than pleasing. Mostly though I have a fair bit of confidence in the kitchen and think that I mostly produce meals of some quality.

During the Covid-19 lockdowns I discovered a renewed interest in baking, after not having much time or inclination for such, for a number of years. I found that the effort this activity took provided a calming alternative to my feelings of anger and frustration with government ineptitude, mismanagement and bad, bad, behaviour. I shared some of the food that I prepared during this period with friends (left outside my door to be exchanged with something they had prepared for me) and with a homeless man I met on an early walk one morning. I think he enjoyed the quiches and scones that I made, even though I had no kitchen scales and guessed at the quantities of flour, butter, and so on, that I needed.

The relationship between food and wellbeing, with health and illness, is of course of much concern, not least with reference to food poverty and inequality more generally. This is something I have written about before in both fiction, memoir and academic writings, and I feel sure it’s something I’ll return to. To conclude today I’ll just say how grateful I am to the participants of today’s workshop for their hard work and their word sharings which have encouraged me once again to reflect on the pleasures and problems with food.

 

If you’d like to try a similar exercise on your own, pick a book from your bookshelf/ves (or if you're like me, one of the many piles around the house), open the book about a third of the way through and write down the first five or six words you are drawn to. Do the same another couple of times with the same book or another one. Spend a minute or two looking through your ‘chosen’ words then set a timer for TEN MINUTES and write something, anything, remembering to use at least eight of the words.

Enjoy.

 Afterpoems (and more)

A couple of weekends ago as part of a wonderful conference - 18th Annual Keele Counselling & Psychotherapy Conference (Research and Practice): 'What's Love Got to Do With It?' 20th & 21st April, 2024 - I attended a creative writing workshop led by Professor Ceri Morgan; a researcher-practitioner who works on literary geographies, place-writing and participatory arts. As a facilitator of such workshops myself it’s always great to be on the ‘other side’: to get some new ideas, to work with interesting like-minded others, to write….  As part of the workshop we read some poetry and one of the tasks set was to write an afterpoem (or story) in response to one of the pieces we had read. An afterpoem is a poem inspired by, in response to, as a homage to the original work. An afterpoem engages in some way (which may include building themes, contraction, following the style of and more) with the original poem and its author.

One of the poems we read in the workshop was Soup by Casey Bailey, the Birmingham Poet Laureate 2020-2022 (see and hear more here https://caseybailey.co.uk/poetry). Here is it:

SOUP

Today, you ate tomato soup like it was the first meal that you had eaten in days. You had half a cheese sandwich for lunch at one thirty. There is soup on the table and bread in your hair, you look like Mowgli from The Jungle Book, if Mowgli had eaten soup, and you smile as the yoghurt is placed in front of you. You look at yoghurt how I looked at your mother the day I met her, how I looked at your mother at four o’clock this morning as she sighed in her sleep, dreaming of you and your ways. You look at yoghurt how I looked at your mother when I found her in the art room, painting, at college. Her paintbrush darting like sparrows on autumn mornings, leaving crimsons and caramels in their wake. I knew then that she would spend her life both being and making beauty. She feeds you yoghurt. I take the wipes out. There is soup all over the floor. (Casey Bailey (2021) Please Do Not Touch Portishead: Burning Eye Books) 

I loved Soup when I first read it. I love it still. I’ve bought Please Do Not Touch (which includes Soup) to read more by its author. My afterpoem, written mostly in the workshop and then finished in the early hours of the next morning is called Tea. 

TEA

You loved tea and drank it continuously. Not just any tea though, it had to be Darjeeling with full fat milk. ‘Weak as piss’, some would mock. You’d shrug and put the kettle on to boil once more. One of the gifts you left me with is to be less worried about what critical others think and say; to be more confident in my own choices and to recognise the value in what I have to offer the world. Although a coffee drinker before I met you, and still mostly one today, I’d join you in a cuppa, feeling a small connection with you – whether together or apart – when enjoying the hot, but not so milky, mug-full. I still think of  you every time I reach for a teabag rather than the coffee pot. Together we faced some challenging times and it hurts me that you didn’t always value yourself enough, didn’t value yourself as much as you valued me. I remember your smile, your lovely long body, your beautiful voice, your political conviction and your love of books. I remember how you always made me feel centre stage. I’m thinking now of when following an early date at a night club with a group of friends one told me afterwards that as you watched me on the dance floor you turned to her and said ‘She’s wonderful, isn’t she?’ I’m remembering too the mess you'd create, and leave, in the kitchen whenever you made a drink or prepared a meal. 

Those who know me well will immediately realise that this is written for John (1948-2010).

I week later I am running my own creative writing workshop as part of the second annual Reengaging the Body Symposia Symposia/Workshop: Reengaging the body – boomerang-project.org.uk at beautiful Dartington Hall in Devon. For one of the exercises I first explain the afterpoem concept and suggest that participants might like to write an afterpoem, afterstory, aftersong (etc.). I’d read Tea the night before at our open mike event so everyone already had an example of such work. In my session I provide a section of a novel as one possible prompt for an afterpiece.

Jennie, written by Paul Gallico and published in 1950, tells the story of Peter, an eight year old boy, who when knocked down by a car wakes to find that he is a cat. (Interestingly I am not the first to speak of other than human bodies during our weekend).  Jennie befriends Peter and teaches him how to be, and how to survive in the world as, a cat. In the extract I share in Dartington Jennie is explaining how and why cats wash. Here’s just a little of her lesson:

If you have committed any kind of an error and anyone scolds you – wash,” she was saying. “If you slip and fall off something and somebody laughs at you – wash. If you are getting the worst of an argument and want to break off hostilities until you have composed yourself, start washing. Remember, every cat respects another cat at her toilet. That’s our first rule of social deportment, and you must also observe it. Whatever the situation, whatever difficulty you may be in you can’t go wrong if you wash. If you come into a room full of people you do not know, and who are confusing to you, sit right down in the midst of them and start washing. They’ll end up by quieting down and watching you. Some noise frightens you into a jump, and somebody you know saw you were frightened – begin washing immediately. If somebody calls you and you don’t care to come and still you don’t wish to make it a direct insult – wash. …..

I give participants the choice of responding to a favourite poem or story that in some way engages with body(ies), that I’d asked them to source the previous evening, or to respond to the passage from Jennie. This leads to some truly wonderful pieces.

Once home I decide to write about my (to date) afterpoem experiences. Wanting to publish Soup in full I contact Casey Bailey via his webpage. Replying almost immediately he kindly granted me permission, saying how pleased he was that his work had inspired me. Thank You Casey.

Never be afraid to contact an artist you admire.