HOLLINGDEAN WRITING WORKSHOP: THE GARDEN SESSION
Date: November 17 2021
Persons:
Kat
Verity
Jenny
Libby
Lisa
Matt
Kate
Karen
Anna
Poems:
Erec and Enide by Amy De’Ath
Renaming Things, by Bernadette Mayer
Report:
Why wouldn’t Erec stop talking even after Enide falls asleep. Does she die? Have a baby spider plant to plant. The roots look like maggots. Just squish them into the wet compost but it’s probably worth putting some blue tissue under the pot, as water will drip out onto the poems. Enide’s name means mistreated wife or suffering wife and lots of other things. Does it ruin the poem to know the story? Erec uses long and pompous words, and Enide just tells him strange practical things. Is Erec a person or a place? Is Enide alive or dead? // The poem does not attach you to its settings and spaces. It feels quite vast and expansive - as if there were a wind running through it (and gallowing tore my winnow north).
What is it, Hildergarvonbingen? Hildergard got us speaking about nuns again. Look, the word “garden”. One of the first poems that really touched me. It is so sad for Erec to say “it feels like you’ve gone away”, because he obviously doesn’t believe it, or perhaps acknowledges the distinction between feelings and reality. The isle of Avalon, covered in mist, is high priestesses only. Has Enide gone there? You can call anything in your garden whatever you want. I like, “attacker of Bernadette”. The woman who discovered quarks but didn’t get the nobel prize for it. Is she in the Hildergard von Bingen gardening society and is her garden too small to see? (Bernadette says in her book that she’s got the smallest possible lawn) I can’t get this one off the rest, they’ve all become one. Some poems make you a good reader of poems and some poems make you a poet. They will probably grow if you just drop them on the ground. Mum told me I would wet the bed if I picked dandelions. Let’s make a pizza then. What shall we call this potato? We made food together. We rambled. We joked. We listened to Hildergard von Bingen and imagined that she (the singer in the recording as her) was just singing to herself for hours and hours.
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Back to the Garden Shed
Date: November 17 2021
Persons:
Kat
Verity
Jenny
Libby
Lisa
Matt
Kate
Karen
Anna
Poems:
Erec and Enide by Amy De’Ath
Renaming Things, by Bernadette Mayer
Report:
Why wouldn’t Erec stop talking even after Enide falls asleep. Does she die? Have a baby spider plant to plant. The roots look like maggots. Just squish them into the wet compost but it’s probably worth putting some blue tissue under the pot, as water will drip out onto the poems. Enide’s name means mistreated wife or suffering wife and lots of other things. Does it ruin the poem to know the story? Erec uses long and pompous words, and Enide just tells him strange practical things. Is Erec a person or a place? Is Enide alive or dead? // The poem does not attach you to its settings and spaces. It feels quite vast and expansive - as if there were a wind running through it (and gallowing tore my winnow north).
What is it, Hildergarvonbingen? Hildergard got us speaking about nuns again. Look, the word “garden”. One of the first poems that really touched me. It is so sad for Erec to say “it feels like you’ve gone away”, because he obviously doesn’t believe it, or perhaps acknowledges the distinction between feelings and reality. The isle of Avalon, covered in mist, is high priestesses only. Has Enide gone there? You can call anything in your garden whatever you want. I like, “attacker of Bernadette”. The woman who discovered quarks but didn’t get the nobel prize for it. Is she in the Hildergard von Bingen gardening society and is her garden too small to see? (Bernadette says in her book that she’s got the smallest possible lawn) I can’t get this one off the rest, they’ve all become one. Some poems make you a good reader of poems and some poems make you a poet. They will probably grow if you just drop them on the ground. Mum told me I would wet the bed if I picked dandelions. Let’s make a pizza then. What shall we call this potato? We made food together. We rambled. We joked. We listened to Hildergard von Bingen and imagined that she (the singer in the recording as her) was just singing to herself for hours and hours.
Back to the Garden Shed