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Welcome note

Following funding from GRADskills Innovation Grant for the project Engaging with the Public: Creative Writing Workshops for Ethnographic Research, Postgraduate Research students in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews formed a creative writing community. Between spring term 2019 and spring term 2020, members met up and participated in writing workshops led by Dr Garry MacKenzie.

Over this series of 10 workshops, 2 hour-long each, the participants had the opportunity to:

  • familiarise with different creative writing techniques, styles and formats;
  • develop creative writing as a continuous practice;
  • think creatively about their research;
  • learn how to engage with non-academic audiences through their writing.

This website, initially designed as means to encourage peer feedback and support throughout the workshop series, is now upgraded to present few writing examples of students’ progress (some named and some wishing to remain anonymous) and will be updated frequently as the participants review and develop their work further.

— Meetings & themes itinerary —

Session 1 – Ideas and inspiration: 17.04.19, 16:00-18:00 @ HEB
Session 2 – Setting and world building: 22.05.19, 13:00-15:00 @ HEB
Session 3 – Creating a sense of character: 02.10.19, 14:00-16:00 @ Arts Sem. 6
Session 4 – Storytelling: point of view and pacing: 30.10.19, 10:00-12:00 @ Irvine Sem. 310
Session 5 – How to use imagery effectively: 04.12.19, 14:00-16:00 @ Byre cafe
Session 6 – Dialogue: 05.02.20, 14:00-16:00 @ EDG:G01
Session 7 – Thinking about language like a poet: 19.02.20, 14:00-16:00 @ SWA C26
Session 8 – Writing about landscape and the non-human: 08.04.20, 14:00 – 16:00 via Zoom
Session 9 – Writing from experience: 22.04.20, 14:00 – 16:00 via Zoom
Session 10 – Redrafting and concision: 29.04.20, 14:00 – 16:00 via Zoom

Cityscape (in) absence

By Eleni Kotsira

Original version 
[as published on Poetic Movements Blog]


The store is gone
but you still think you can walk past its door.
The white aisles create a void
but you almost touch what was your milk of choice.


Cities raise a joy in front of the eyes
only to abruptly dematerialise.
Suddenly you are haunted by an eventide
that never found the time to thrive.


Visiting the empty market
people come & go their bags laden.
What else was to expect? –
places do not just ebb.


Children rush from us beyond
riding on the menacing dragon;
made of stone & standing still
in the ghosted streets of Dè.


///


- revisited based on feedback from the workshops - 


The store is gone
but you still think you can walk past its door.
The white aisles create a void
but you almost touch your milk of choice.


Children rush from us beyond
riding on the menacing dragon;
made of stone & standing still
in the ghosted streets of Dè.


Cities rise before the eyes
only to abruptly dematerialise.
Suddenly you are haunted by an eventide
that never found the time to thrive.


Visiting the empty market
people come & go their bags laden.
What else to expect? –
places do not just ebb.

January 2020,
Dundee.

Photograph: dragons in Dundee; 1 February 2020.

Fragmentation

By Eleni Kotsira

" … for a while there’s only time and flesh to pass before the rising sun."
 
 Looking through the half-cave the moon
      was shining already like a sun.
 It was barely past midnight
      and your words were caught in silence.
 Hot water rose from the depths of the earth
      like a short-lived Apocalypse.  
 None of us moved.
 
 "And it happens that tonight is a night picked from a hundred and one  
 other possible nights,"  
 
 I thought that these hands would  
      not breath through the air again;
 until earth slightly shivered and paradoxically
      the cave gave life to butterflies;
 which instantly flew high and far
      above the heated waters
 their dark wings blurring the moonlight.
 
 "each spinning lost between the stars in the silence…"  
 
 I told you that the morning
      "is well known to always come"
 and you looked back
 to where the cave seemed to end
 to where darkness was absolute
 impenetrable even by the overarching moon.
 
 And just like that, our
      "ritual days of living"
 were over
      "without our realising what it is that’s being done."
 
 
 20 July 2019,
 Samothraki.
 
 
 Verses in quotation marks are taken by A. F. Harrold’s poem ‘And Looking Back’.

Sea Air

By anonymous

Let the sea entice it from the shore, 
And bear it far on gentle waves. 
I will carry it to water's edge, 
A silhouette, less, of faint light, 
To give to silt and sea-foam's tender
Caresses, in awaited farewell.

White horses, though silver, rear afar, 
And ride out, before the swell breaks, 
Beguile it from my heart, I ask, 
And tempt it, willing, into the wash,
That sunlight glances golden rind, then, 
Drag it to dark depths and let it drown. 

White horses rise and fall, above fathomless below,
Salt abrasive against the rasped throat of the thing. 
Downward, like unfurling ribbon, cascading feather, 
into graceful descent. Without light, without breath.
And love lost to water, I turn, empty-hearted,
Vowing his regret, that he would cross a sea-witch.