Keele Writing
Undergraduate Creative Writing 2006/7
Notes
As writers of all levels of experience know, the workshop can be both a strain and a stimulus: a strain because it demands a regular rhythm of writing and thinking about writing; and a stimulus for the same reasons. The work displayed here represents a selection from a number of workshop-based courses at Keele University during Autumn 2006 and Spring 2007.
The writers are all English undergraduates who have chosen to take a module in Creative Writing. All might be said to have developing or emerging voices as writers. The selections are nominally a 'Best of...', but are also intended to be representative in some way of the various strands of writing which emerged from the 12-week courses which formed the Creative Writing module.
As writers who participate in workshops also know, there is a permanent tension between one's intentions for one's writing and the process of feedback, critique and revision. Different writers have different attitudes to the extent to which pieces which pass through the workshop are entirely their own work, or work which is shaped by one's peers. However, all the writers represented here would, we are sure, wish to thank their colleagues for helping to bring these pieces to a successful state.
These considerations aside, we should also celebrate the fact that there is work of real quality here - and it would have been possible to extend this web-based publication still further from the work available. Inevitably, there is more poetry than prose here - partly to reflect the ratio between the two media in the Portfolios produced by the writers, and partly because the web is a medium which works better with shorter literary forms.
For simplicity's sake, the site is divided into two sections - Poems and Prose. The work in each section is then listed by author, as well as via clickable fragments (like those which surround this page) from the pieces themselves. We hope you enjoy them.
As writers of all levels of experience know, the workshop can be both a strain and a stimulus: a strain because it demands a regular rhythm of writing and thinking about writing; and a stimulus for the same reasons. The work displayed here represents a selection from a number of workshop-based courses at Keele University during Autumn 2006 and Spring 2007.
The writers are all English undergraduates who have chosen to take a module in Creative Writing. All might be said to have developing or emerging voices as writers. The selections are nominally a 'Best of...', but are also intended to be representative in some way of the various strands of writing which emerged from the 12-week courses which formed the Creative Writing module.
As writers who participate in workshops also know, there is a permanent tension between one's intentions for one's writing and the process of feedback, critique and revision. Different writers have different attitudes to the extent to which pieces which pass through the workshop are entirely their own work, or work which is shaped by one's peers. However, all the writers represented here would, we are sure, wish to thank their colleagues for helping to bring these pieces to a successful state.
These considerations aside, we should also celebrate the fact that there is work of real quality here - and it would have been possible to extend this web-based publication still further from the work available. Inevitably, there is more poetry than prose here - partly to reflect the ratio between the two media in the Portfolios produced by the writers, and partly because the web is a medium which works better with shorter literary forms.
For simplicity's sake, the site is divided into two sections - Poems and Prose. The work in each section is then listed by author, as well as via clickable fragments (like those which surround this page) from the pieces themselves. We hope you enjoy them.
Rob Stannard & James Sheard
my mouth curls,
O
I absorb her
kerosene
Reaching out he patted Steve on
the head with a small pink hand.
Her neck, for so long a
practical device, thick for bellowing, seems almost
artistically constructed, charming in its
functionality.
No matter how soft it still broke
the air like a bomb, the flames lit Aamu’s beautiful
warm white face, dutifully. There are marks on my arm. I
stayed in today. No answer. I
slept.