What happened to NEWT?

On the blog where I do my blogging, Pages, I reflect on having run it for 10 years (since 15th February 2005) and I say the following:

Another result of my professional life was the creation of NEWT, the Network for Experimental Writing Tutors. It ran for a little while until I encouraged all tutors of writing to join the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE, not such an exciting acronym), not least of all since I was serving on the HE Committee of NAWE. I even started another blog here, but it fell into disuse. There must be hundreds of thousands of blogs, floating around like space-junk, in this fashion. But I don't feel like deleting it, in case there is a need for it to revive, or in case someone might be inspired by it.

All my thoughts on creative writing pedagogy may be read in:

Sheppard, Robert. ‘Poetics as Conjecture and Provocation: an inaugural lecture delivered on 13 March 2007 at Edge Hill University’, New Writing. Vol 5: 1 (2008): 3-26.

Sheppard, Robert. ‘Experiment in Practice and Speculation in Poetics’ in Teaching Modernist Poetry, ed. by Peter Middleton and Nicky Marsh. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010: 158-69.


All of my blogging is now carried out here:

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk

Electronic Newtletter 3

Hey Newts!

I don’t really have any news, but I know that the list has been useful to members in terms of finding external consultants to courses (I’ve done a few, and open to others,) and probably finding external examiners. In fact there is evidence now of quite a bit of linguistically innovative creative writing (for want of a better word) being taught across the country, from Roehampton to Salford, Bangor to Dartington, Roehampton to Royal Holloway (oh, that’s just down the road).

One member asked me what Newt was doing. Well, newts don’t do much. But that is a question I’d like to put to the group. In fact, I did have a question last time about resources, about what we teach, and teach from, but received no supplies. (We are all busy: for details of my busyness see www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com for my publishing news, including my critical vol The Poetry of Saying which some might find useful, though it isn’t a creative writing workbook like Hazel Smith’s)

Perhaps there is room for this kind of exchange here. Perhaps there are lessons to be learnt from each other. Perhaps there is a book to be edited that would make all of our lives easier, or some other form of UK-wide exchange. Any ideas, why not use the REPLY TO ALL facility and share it with the group?

Newtronic Newsletter 2

I’ve had a few enquiries about various administrative matters so the network is doing its job. A few bits of (good)news.

A Blog

I’ve set up a blog (or rather, I’ve used a blog, having got interested via Ian Davidson’s collaboration site, http://www.iandavidson.blogspot.com/ ) as a website for Newt. Unfortunately blogspot already has a NEWT site (could be Ken Livingstone’s?) so its URL is http://www.newtwork.blogspot.com/. All I’m going to do is put the newsletters online, but without the membership list. Blogspot is very easy to use, and I recommend it to students. (No one prescribes they must be used as an online Bridget Jones’ Diary, as Ian has proved, so I’m going to use mine to re-launch my magazine Pages. Click to check it out.)

Two Publications

ONE

Scott Thurston and I were asked, at short notice, to contribute to a fairly conventional Creative Writing handbook (a good one though). The chapter we wrote, ‘Try Something Different’ is based on the materials he and I have used at Edge Hill to coax nervous students to write poetry for the first time. Thus it presents a quite cautious approach, via haiku = imagism = objectivism, but it works.

The book is The Road to Somewhere: a creative writing companion, eds Robert Graham, Helen Newall, Heather Leach, John Singleton (Palgrave, 2005): isbn 1 4039 1640 3.

There is also a chapter on ‘Words and Images’, but it doesn’t really go far enough.

TWO

Hazel Smith’s book The Writing Experiment has just (16th February 2005) landed on my desk and I believe that everybody will want to know of it. Subtitled ‘Strategies for Innovative Creative Writing’, that’s exactly what it is, for poetry, fiction, hypertext, and all sorts in between. I suspect it overlaps with a lot that some of us do already, but there’s much I hadn’t thought of. I could do no better than quoting one of the blurbs: ‘This is an impressive book, because it covers areas of creative writing practice and theory that have not been covered in published form … it links radical practice with radical (but better-known) theory, and it will appeal to anyone looking for a different approach…’ (I know that’s true because I wrote it, interestingly as a publisher’s reader, another use for our network, of course). See the website of the publisher here, Allen and Unwin and the specific page for this book (still under construction I note): The Writing Experiment . Not sure how much it will cost in the UK>

A question

Perhaps this raises the question of what resources we use to teach the kinds of (different) writing we are into. For myself, I can say that the second volume of the Joris and Rothenberg, Poems for the Millennium has been invaluable as a teaching and inspirational source. The (good) students seem to like it; I’ve never seen one for sale second hand from a student! If any of you have suggestions, we could share. Or is everybody devising his or her own? Are we all re-inventing (again, a different) wheel? If anybody wants to share ideas, e mail me for the next newtletter. Perhaps some us could assemble a book?



Robert Sheppard: shepparr@edgehill.ac.uk

Newtronic Newsletter One (excerpt)

Newtronic Newsletter 1

Ouch! I just made that up. Having decided to set up the Network of Experimental Writing Tutors I haven’t done much about it, although I have now asked a number of people. The aim will be to collect all those involved in teaching ‘experimental’ writing (and I don’t want to get hung up on that word; the interests of those enlisted so far should be enough to define the field), who are interested in sharing experiences, etc. (See the original description, first posting.)

Network of Experimental Writing Tutors: Statement

NEWT
Network of Experimental Writing Tutors

c/o Dr Robert Sheppard
Writing Coordinator
Department of English
Edge Hill College of Higher Education
Ormskirk
Lancashire
L39 4QP

shepparr@edgehill.ac.uk


In Britain there has been an explosion of creative writing courses in higher education. On some of these, kinds of writing that might be described as ‘experimental’ are sometimes taught. (I’m hoping my neat acronym might obviate the necessity of having to argue over any other terms for this: linguistically innovative, performance writing, non-linear poetry, whatever….) Sometimes they are tolerated. There is no connection between the people who operate these courses, it seems to me, and a loose network of those involved in teaching such writing (and its poetics) might be useful. I am proposing to do little, other than inviting people to join and then hoping actions will follow. A list of who we are might provide a useful compendium of people to call upon for a variety of examination purposes (externals and PhD examiners), validation consultants, publishers’ readers and referrees, and conference attendance. I certainly know there are times when I have felt exposed doing the work I’m doing. Or even threatened. The latest trend in HE seems to be to appoint well-known writers to leading positions (regardless of whether they have any history of teaching writing). We might be able to pool teaching materials though this is not my immediate aim.
Please reply if you’d like to sign up. But don’t immediately tell others about it. Tutors who teach ‘free verse’ in week 12 of a 12 week semester have no need of the mutual contact we have the chance to develop. Just putting on your cv that you are a member of NEWT might be a protective move. I’ve only asked a few people so far: Scott Thurston, Patricia Farrell, Maggie O’ (‘I’ll join anything to do with reptiles’) Sullivan – people I’ve personally met over the last few weeks and days when I thought it might be the time to launch it.
I wonder how many there are of us? Can you suggest any other potential members?
Here’s hoping you will reply.

Robert Sheppard

(Provisional) Coordinator of NEWT