writer | editor | artist
My students are awesome! Have I told you that lately? No? Hmmm … I think you are not listening to me. Let me explain. I have these students, and they are FABULOUS. Just read this story by Bronwyn Palmer, and you will see. Bronwyn is currently studying counselling part-time at USQ and hopes to have…
Boo and I have been ambling our way through the How Writers Write Poetry online MOOC. The course is presented by Christopher Merrill and Camille Rankine, via the University of Iowa. This week’s lesson was on ‘the line and the page’ and the assignments were to write a prose poem, and to write a poem…
So many talented students! I am blessed with a great many talented writing students, and am really pleased when they’re brave enough to allow me to share their work with you. Today’s poem was produced after the first-run of the first half of a course that’s partly about writing poetry. Ash is a university student…
I just wanted to share this gorgeous little snippet Maija Lindbergs wrote in class today, when we were messing about with viewpoint and grammatical POV. Maija is a final-year student of Creative Media, and she’s AWESOME, as you’re about to find out … POV: Third Person Viewpoint Character: Owlbit Owlbit was a rabbit by day and an…
This semester, I’m teaching a writing course called Fairytales & Other Forms. Every week, we read a fairytale in various variants, and the writers in the course are asked to write their own (new!) version. The students are second year undergraduates, who are totally amazing. Every week they surprise and delight me with insights into…
This month, I was invited to participate in an online version of the Exquisite Cadaver parlour game, being hosted/published over at The Conversation. I was #7 in a series of ten writers who participated. We each received an email with the preceding entries, and were given about 24 hours to write our 300 word contribution….
Happy New Year! It’s 2015, and I couldn’t be gladder than I am to be welcoming in this fresh new year which, as my old companion Anne Shirley of Green Gables used to say, has no mistakes in it. Not that making mistakes is a problem. One of my favourite anecdotes about how important it…
This Christmas, I constructed a little house out of gingerbread. It had pink glass windows (raspberry flavoured boiled lollies), and snowy white icing. In Europe, baking gingerbread was once (in the 1600s) the province of those who belonged to the gingerbread baker’s guild, except at Christmas and Easter, when anyone could have a go at…
A little while ago, I delivered a creative paper at the ANZSA (Australia and New Zealand Shakespeare Association). I posted the abstract for this paper on my blog a while ago, and thought I’d follow up by sharing the text of the performance. The piece is an examination of the 16 year ‘gap’ in the…
The architect comes into my office smiling, a woven basket on her arm. Greenery – wild and fragrant – spills from the basket. It is a hot day, and she sinks gratefully into the spare chair in my office. I should be clear and say that she is no longer an architect, or not a…