Anne Lamott, author of "Bird by Bird," will be on campus February 5th!

If you haven't read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird yet, you should run to the bookstore and get it--it's one of the best advice & encouragement books for writers of all genres I've ever read. It's a perennial favorite among teachers of writing because Lamott is funny, unpretentious, and full of hard-won advice and insight into how to start writing, keep writing, and how to make your writing better. I know there is a stack of her books at the SU bookstore because I ordered them for my Poetry Writing class.

Amazingly enough, this very famous (and, I'll bet, expensive to hire) speaker/writer is going to be on campus February 5th as part of the annual Search for Meaning Book Fair sponsored by the School of Theology and Ministry (STM). It will be in the Pigott Atrium and surrounding rooms, and in the Pigott auditorium. Here's the link to the schedule--Lamott is speaking in Pigott Auditorium at 10:15 AM as keynote speaker--but get there early! She's famous, she's funny, and (for you to attend) she's free! A winning combination:      www.seattleu.edu/stm/searchformeaningschedule.aspx

Here are some gems from Bird by Bird:

On writing about your family: "Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point at you, while a chilling voice thundered, 'We told you not to tell!' But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on."

On shitty first drafts: "For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.  The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all our out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of your characters wants to say ,"Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?' you let her. No one is going to see it."

On jealousy: "Jealousy is one of the occupational hazards of being a writer, and the most degrading. And I, who have been the Leona Helmsley of jealousy, have come to believe that the only things that help ease or transform it are a) getting older, b) talking about it until the fever breaks, and c) using it as material. Also, someone somewhere along the line is going to be able to make you start laughing about it, and then you will be on your way home."

Prize-wining Fiction Writer Nancy Rawles is Teaching This Spring at SU

We are fortunate to have Nancy Rawles, author of three novels, including  My Jim (Crown, 2005) spending Spring term with us as the Distinguished NW Visiting Fiction Writer.  She will be teaching ENGL 392 Fiction: Longer Forms.

Though trained as a playwright, Nancy made national news with her novel, My Jim, based on the character of Jim in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Her novel, a deep consideration of the effects of slavery on the family and the nation, was chosen in 2009 as the focus of “Seattle Reads,” the prestigious city-wide program sponsored by the Washington Center for the Book and the Seattle Public Library.

Since Nancy has been teaching elementary school for several years she was never available to teach at SU before. Now, however, she is taking a break from teaching youngsters to bring her expertise to our students who are planning to study fiction-writing in the Spring. She has been here before, however, in 2009 to give a reading—a memorable event covered by Frances Dinger (CW ’12) in the Spectator. Read Frances' excellent article about Nancy Rawles here: http://www.su-spectator.com/2.2663/author-nancy-rawles-retells-twain-classic-in-my-jim-1.241697

This is a great opportunity for English majors to get to know one of our region's most accomplished fiction writers!

Scots Poet Brian Whittingham is Teaching Poetry at SU in Spring ‘11

Good news for everyone planning to take poetry this Spring—Glasgow poet Brian Whittingham is coming from Scotland to be the Distinguished Visiting Poet, and to teach Narrative Poetry, ENGL 393.

Brian’s seven books of poetry cover everything from Clydeside dockworkers (as he was in his youth) to a collection of children’s poetry, Septimus Pitt and the Grumbeloids. A prolific and popular poet in Scotland, Brian is also a playwright, photographer, and talented teacher. We’re delighted that he has been able to leave his teaching duties at the Glasgow College of Nautical Studies (sailors need their poets!) to join us for a term this coming Spring.

Brian’s most recent collection of poems is Bunnets n Bowlers: A Clydeside Odyssey (Luath Press Edinburgh, 2009), a reference to the hats worn by the dockworkers (“bunnets” is Glaswegian for “bonnets” which is Scots for “hat”) and the managers—whose bowler hats characterize the men who don’t work with their hands. These poems showcase Brian’s special skills as a labor poet: dialect writing, storytelling, character building, and conveying a complete world to the reader.

Here's a link to his website: http://www.brianwhittingham.co.uk/

Below are a couple of poems from Bunnets n Bowlers:

THE NIGHTSHIFT MAN

He downed a few halfs and half-pints

in the Seven Seas public bar.

His nightshift chaser

for the shipyard that never slept.

And inside the fabrication shed

dimly lit

like a Stanley Spencer cathedral,

the half-cut nightshift man,

Lilliputian against the funnels 

that seemed to touch the shed’s roof,

he shaped and formed the cold creaking steel.

And in between showers of spraying sparks 

and blinding flashes of light

a fill of rattle hammer clatter screech and whine,

the nightshift man

played midnight darts,

munches three am makeshift meals,

and stole forty in the cardboard box beds.

And when the job went wrong

her cursed long

into the wee small hours.

And in the mornings going home

to his bed he passed

newly risen nine-to-fivers

with faces as dreich

as the clouds above their heads

blotting out the blue of the sky.

INDUSTRIAL DEAFNESS

In the QUIET comfortable waiting room

of the private hospital

a guy comes through the door

exclaiming to his colleagues

that both eardrums are perforated,

his claim is looking good

and we murmur our approval,

we’ll screw the bastards

out of every penny they’ve got

we think as we grow more deaf by the minute.

(And if all else fails

there’s always bronchitis

                        asthma

                        vibration white finger

                        or asbestosis.)

and I am acutely aware

it’s too late to understand

the implications of

            ‘Right enuf, wi thae big feet

            yi could get a joab in the polis nae bother,

            Ach, bit therr’s nae tae worry,

            ah’ll get yi a joab in the yards,

            yi’ll be fixed  up fur life, so yi wull,

            fixed up fur life.’

It’s strange: in my head

I can still hear these words being said.

Happy New Year's Eve--A Writer's Resolutions

The custom of making a New Year's Resolution can be fraught with anxiety for writers--can I make up for all the writing I didn't do last year? Will I be able to write regularly this year? Will I find a publisher, a writing group, a class, a mentor? Am I dreaming? What's a realistic goal?

My take on this problem is based on the research that says you get more accomplished if you work on your writing for 20 minutes each day than if you wait for a block of time to sit down and do a huge push. That's not to say that NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month in November) isn't a productive exercise, but forcing yourself to write 20-30 minutes per day keeps the pump primed. As one of my teachers, Skye Moody, says "If you sit down in the same place every day, the Muse will know where to find you."

What works best for me is having a weekly writing group. The Greenwood Poets are in their eighth year of meeting every week for two hours (they're mostly retired--those of us still laboring in the vineyards work our schedule around to make the time). So every Tuesday morning I say "OMG! I don't have a poem for the group!" and then I sit down and write one, or revise the one I brought in last week. This has caused me to produce a LOT of poetry over the last eight years. So I'm an example of someone who does well with a weekly writing session rather than a daily writing session. It's all I can manage at this point, but it's been enough to get the work out.

So what's my resolution? I have all my writing projects listed on a white board in my office. I resolve to work on each project steadily through the year--look at the board daily, decide on priorities, noodle away at the things that seem alive and current. I have one hope (I don't dare to make it a resolution) and that is that after my poetry book is out in October (Peculiar Honors, Black Heron Press) that I can return to my long-abandoned-but-much-thought-about novel.

What's your New Year's Resolution? Tell the rest of us--sharing a resolution helps you to keep it!

CW Grads, Abby Murray and Lish McBride, publish a poetry chapbook and a YA novel

I had lunch with two of CW's star alums yesterday--poet Abby Murray and YA novelist Lish McBride. We caught up over fake sweet and sour chicken at Bamboo Gardens. Abby brought me a jar of home made strawberry-alcohol jam for Christmas, and Lish brought me a big container of homemade eggnog snickerdoodle cookies. I gave them my latest batch of poems in the current Floating Bridge Review 3 and brought Abby a Box of Hope (hope not included) and Lish a bar of Wash your Soul Clean soap (both re-gifted from Fr. Josef Venker, S.J.--chair of SU's Fine Arts Department-- who receives more corny religious stuff than the ordinary priest). Given the fact that Abby is a poet (God knows, we poets need hope) and Lish is riding the great wave of interest in fiction of the occult (and may be spoiled rotten with advances, movie deals, etc.) the re-gifts seemed appropriate.

Abby lives in Denver now that her husband Tom is posted to Iraq, and teaches writing, conducts a reading series, and continues working on her own successful poetry. She graduated from SU's Creative Writing program in 2005 and got her MFA from Pacific University, Oregon. Her chapbook, "Me & Coyote," was chosen by Marvin Bell for the Lost Horse New Poets Series and is the featured first collection.

Lish came to SU's Creative Writing program as transfer student, graduated with Abby in 2005 and got her MFA at the University of New Orleans. Now she's got a five-star YA novel climbing the charts--no less a judge than Sherman Alexie says "This is a funny scary book, or a scary funny book. In either case, it's a GREAT book. I love it!" Lish lives in town--we'll be having her on our E2 Reading series at Elliott Bay soon, so stay tuned.

Check out Abby and Lish's books on Amazon below:

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Horse-Press-New-Poets/dp/0984451021/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1293594223&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Hold-Closer-Necromancer-Lish-McBride/dp/0805090983/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293592382&sr=8-1

Come get your Writer's Chronicles!

Greetings, majors, minors, tout le monde:


Here's how membership in the Associated Writer's Programs (AWP) works: You say how many majors your have in your program (we have over 100 so I said "100" to be conservative), you pay them your millions (several hundred dollars for a program our size) and you get lots of good benefits-- access to their website with all kinds of professional data and information--but most of all you get The Writer's Chronicle which is their very good magazine full of interesting articles, advice to writers, and deadlines for contests and submissions, as well as lots of ads for writing programs all over the country and the world. Nifty, yes?

Well, what I didn't realize is that they'd send enough Chronicles for all our 100+ CW majors, and that the magazine comes out with frightening regularity. When they started arriving last term in brown boxes I felt like the Sorcerer's Apprentice--no sooner would I unload one heap of magazines onto all the flat surfaces in the English Department, then another set of brown boxes would appear with another hundred magazines--and these are LARGE FORMAT magazines!

So PLEASE come get your Writer's Chronicles--English majors, English minors--Lit, CW, there's enough for everyone! The current number has articles by Cornelius Eady, a very exciting African American poet and novelist, Maxine Kumin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning formalist poet, as well as an article about creative  non-fiction by Seattle native Susan Detweiler--along with all kinds of useful information on getting your work published.

Come by and say Hi when you get your Chronicle--I'm in Casey 510, the office surrounded by stacks of brown boxes.