Writing lab: Seeing the mystery of space; walking the music of time

Sessions without a date

• 1ExerciseIntroduction and overview. The art of participatory knowing.Session 14 materials

  Introduction and invitation to connect with a specific space as a ‘knowing space’.

  Theme: What does it mean to participate in the kind of knowing that Bringhurst writes about; what does it feel like?

  Descriptions and settings. Entering the ‘knowing space’.

  Theme: If our job is to create a mood for the reader that speaks relationally to their emotions, values, and powers of reason, how can we move beyond character-based drama to explore the power of setting, time, and narratorial voice to provide an emotional backdrop or colour to our writing?

  • An invitation to enter into this kind of knowing.Prompt ideas
  • An exploration of principles of symbolic geometry and architecture – sacred and secular – with particular emphasis on the principles of Islamic geometry.Prompt ideas
  • Individual writing exercise (evoking the ‘knowing space’).‘Play away’ games (out of class)
  • Choose a personality (imaginary, real, historic, current, private connection, public figure, archetype, function) and put them in a familiar space (to them: personal, historic, cultural, social, shared, private, or other) to draw on and write about in session 2. Stretch exercise: Put them in an unfamiliar space (to them).HW

  In class

  • ExerciseHow can sensory, imaginative, and energetic modes of being help us produce a multi-layered piece of writing – a piece of writing that demonstrates participative knowing through evocations of person, place, and poignant moment which link to eternal-infinite ‘dimensions’ of being?
  • ExerciseSpace task sharing. Exploring ways of engaging with space. Spanning. Restricting. Contracting. Expanding.
• 2ExercisePersons and personas: How do people act and exist in ‘knowing space and time’?Session 23 materials

  An invitation to connect with people, personalities, archetypes.

  Theme: The individual and the collective. The individual and society.

  • Change and constancy. What stays the same; what changes?Prompt ideas
  • Individual writing exercise (based on characters, archetypes, place, and moment(s)).‘Play away’ games (out of class)
  • What is time for you? For your character? For the space you chose to describe? Take the time to engage with time. Allow it to shape you.HW

  In class

  • ExercisePersonality task sharing. How has your character remained the same; what has changed for them in the last year; decade; life so far? What about their hopes and fears for the future? How does that shape their being in the here and now?
• 3ExerciseExistence in time: Assume Time’s knowing. How does time react to us? How does its knowing influence our acts?Session 33 materials

  An invitation to creatively explore notions of time.

  Theme: Time flows. How are we shaped by it?

  • How can time help shape a narrative? How can we know time? How does knowledge evolve through time, and how can we link to the knowledge that transcends time?Prompt ideas
  • Individual writing exercise (narratives shaped by time); application to own work.‘Play away’ games (out of class)
  • Choose a short example of poetic writing to bring to the next class and share a question about it for us to discuss.HW

  In class

  • ExerciseTime task sharing. Letting time tell and direct the stories that flow through us. Personify time: let Time reveal itself to you in its chosen form.
• 4ExerciseThe magic of poetry: Bringing the liberal arts together.Session 43 materials

  An exploration of the integrated and integrative aspect of the classical liberal arts and their union in the poetic.

  Theme: Finding inspiration in the classical liberal arts as an integrated and integrative tool for learning and ‘knowing knowing’. Exploring the essences of the three word-based subjects of the trivium (logic, grammar, rhetoric) and the four number-based subjects of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music: the study of number in one and two dimensions, in three dimensions, in motion, and in harmony and proportion).

  • How does poetry unite and celebrate the two branches of the liberal arts?Prompt ideas
  • Individual writing exercise (voice and story); application to own work.‘Play away’ games (out of class)
  • How and where can this integrated and integrative form of knowing be found in the here and now today? Find at least 3 examples and share at least 1 of them in our WhatsApp group 1 week after the course has ended.HW

  In class

  • ExercisePoetic writing task sharing. Rhetoric and rhythm. Poetry and the poetic.