Godiva County, Montana
by William Stafford
She’s a big country.
Her undulations roll and flow in the sun.
Those flanks quiver when the wind caresses the grass.
Who turns away when so generous a body
offers to play hide-and-seek all summer?
One shoulder leans bare all the way up the mountain;
limbs range and plunge wildly into the river.
We risk our eyes every day; they celebrate;
they dance and flirt over this offered treasure.
“Be alive,” the land says.
“Listen– this is your time, your world, your pleasure.”
While visiting Bozeman Montana this week attended a local writer’s workshop to see how we in
Champaign-Urbana can improve our own workshops.
Even out West it seems a local weekly writing workshop is a local weekly writing workshop, but I did gain some fresh perspectives as an outsider.
The numbers -
Although this group has been in Bozeman for 5 years, they said they have a core of 8-12 folks and really have no interest in expanding to anymore than that. My thoughts - why not expand? Writing is at its core about self exploration and personal improvement - doesn’t our society need more independent creative thinkers in this increasingly corporatized, NSA surveilled world? You will just need a) more small 8-12 person groups or b) different formats which brings me to ...
Seeing the group from a group dynamic perspective -
Although the group was slightly smaller than usual due to a storm, the dynamics were strikingly similar to other writing groups I am familiar with - i.e. CU Poetry, but I suppose any small group wanting to get something accomplished needs a similar structure. Cue the strong charismatic leader. Each group needs a leader - yes - but when one person is so dominant for such a long time the overall organization may tend to lose flexibility and experimentation. What I have tried to do here at CU Poetry is to informally share leadership duties within individual workshops. But what I think we should do is formally have long standing members take control of certain workshops and see how creative we can get - thus if (and when) we grow we can have folks with experience leading their own groups.
Technical Speak -
Although they are mainly a fiction group it was interesting to hear a list of writer’s jargon - tone, narrative, pacing etc. used with each piece to get the participants thinking along those lines. I think our group actually shies away from such terminology in order to seem more inclusive although we do use a variety of other terms for similar concepts. And after reading about workshops here -
So you want to be a writer … from The Guardian (Last week Hanif Kureishi dismissed creative writing courses as 'a waste of time', yet they have never been more popular. Other leading author-teachers reveal their advice to students)
it occurred to me - should we even refer to ourselves as a workshop? That is certainly up for debate. But I think creativity, self exploration, freedom of expression, self improvement and individual striving for enlightenment is too important to be left up to the professionals.
In any case just as we should not slavishly avoid sounding like traditional workshops, we should not be afraid to use established workshop language and techniques to continually challenge our works and ourselves.
Practice writing during the group time -
Was glad to see a live demo of how another group writes during workshop time as we have some folks anxious to do just that. Their approach? They free write for a couple of minutes (which no one sees) - then the leader picks a topic and they write for a couple of more minutes and have a few folks share their fresh off the press works. Seems to work well and frees up the inspiration a bit. For example - not hesitating when thinking a line is too simple or plain - or not being hesitant to use an image or idea you have previously used.
The example this week was to use one of the elements - fire water earth air and use one of those to describe the creative impulse or where your writing comes from - Fun little exercise (or variation of) we will definitely have to try. Personally I didn’t go with just free association but was in poeming mode here is what I came up with first -
fire warms at certain distances
burns you from others
too much too little
this goldilock zone
we spin in
I orbit with you
sun to planet
planet to moon
reflecting fire or burning
from within
how I long to know you
and myself
(as I know myself)
and even though some of the lines are a bit too pat for my taste and I have used the image idea of goldilock zone before, after just a few tweaks I have this
Fire warms from certain distances
burns at others
too much too little
this goldilock zone
we spin in
orbiting with you
sun to planet
planet to moon
reflecting fire or burning
from within
how I long to know you
as I know myself
I don’t know maybe I will work on it later or use some pieces of it later on or simply shelve it as the writing experiment it was but it was a good exercise to try and got me writing and thinking so was worth the effort.
In conclusion -
When visiting another town and you have some free time, I highly recommend checking out some of the local writing groups. Unfortunately I was not able to attend the Gypsy Rhythm Writers twice monthly open mic as well. But even so it was encouraging to see such a wide variety of courageous people willing to share a bit of who they are through the written word. I found the folks here in the real west of Montana to be not so different from home or, as I expect, the rest of the world. If you have the impulse to write, then write - And when it comes to your writing remember in the immortal words of the band “38 Special”
“Your baby needs someone to believe in
And a whole lot of space to breathe in
It's so damn easy
When your feelings are such
To overprotect her
To love her too much…
Just hold on loosely but don't let go
If you cling too tightly
You're gonna lose control
Yeah, yeah, yeah”
Or something like that - happy writing and have fun