The Hodgepodge, a writer’s journal
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Field Trips
I went to The Writers Patch last night. This is a songwriters gathering at a local bar, The Skylark Room at the Burrinja Cultural Centre, organised to showcase the art of song writing, encourage audience interaction and feature local Hills’ musicians. I went because I’ve accidentally become interested in song writing again. I wrote some ...
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Re-imagining Yourself
Re-imagining Yourself I wrote this in Geraldton a few weeks ago – before NaNoWriMo swallowed me whole! I like being in slightly different timezone. I’m writing this in Geraldton, Western Australia and it’s not even 6.00 in the morning. This makes me a morning person! I’m the kind of relentlessly cheerful person everyone who has ...
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Revision tips.
I’m posting some revision tips for poetry here – mainly because I promised I would. Poets can revise their work for decades – sometimes to the detriment of the original work! Anyone who has ever been involved in a poetry workshop group can attest to the frustrating challenges of revision – from both sides of ...
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Tea and Empathy
I meet a writer-visual artist friend of mine and over a lengthy cup of chai tea we discuss being artists, the perils and the joys. I think about this so much – probably too much. In my darkest moments I’m all about the perils – the lack of economic certainty and respect, the self-doubt and ...
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The Memoir Salon
Last night I attended the inaugural Memoir Salon, hosted and dreamt up by Josiane Behmoiras. Traditionally a salon is a gathering of people meeting to discuss ideas as a form of both education and entertainment. Salon hosts – or more often, hostesses – chose the company carefully for both compatibility and contrasting opinions, intellectual breadth, ...
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Oh my goodness – it’s Spring!
Much of this year seemed to pass in a blur of work – I joined a small writer’s group with some ex-colleagues and friends which met every Tuesday to write. We’re in recess at the moment as the two other members are overseas. (I did say small!) That meant that I actually did quite a ...
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What’s new – good question!
There is this – uncorrected proof of Lisette’s Paris Notebook! I’m at the proofreading stage now. It feels great to be at the final stages. There has also been knitting, sewing, sourdough baking. As well as teaching – I teach poetry now every week at The Avenue Neighbourhood House in Blackburn South – we begin ...
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To fragment. Or not. The question.
Sentence fragments. What is one, exactly? Well, it’s reasonably simple – a sentence must contain a main clause. A main clause consists of an independent subject and a verb and expresses a single idea. Once upon a time, students were taught to diagram a sentence. I escaped this – by the time I was in ...
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The Beats
I’ve been teaching a class on the Beat writers – specifically Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman and Diane di Prima. I’ve re-read On the Road and some of Ginsberg’s poetry and reaquainted myself with some of Waldman and di Prima’s poetry. I stepped into another era – it wasn’t just the work – that ...
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Writing Habits
Years ago when both my young adult children were very small, I would write for an hour each morning during half an hour of Sesame Street and the half hour Playschool programme. These kept them happily occupied and as I didn’t have anything as glamorous as an office back then, I wrote in the same ...