For all blocked creative writing students. Both physically and metaphorically. The text to be studied is an extract from Zora Neale Houston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God “It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every…
A burnt orange month with mellow sienna shades of fruitfulness. La rentrée is over. Classes are settling down and we are all starting to learn each other’s names. Students who follow the second-year undergraduate distance learning class in creative writing at Paul-Valéry University have been introducing themselves via the first MOODLE forum by discussing their…
Well, as summer continues fiercely hot, I’m reading Color, A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay (2002). This is a fascinating book of colour adventures, histories, facts and stories. As you know, I’ve recently been thinking about colour and writing and so was intrigued when Finlay made a reference to a poem Dance…
Summer is well and truly upon us. With thermometers registering 44 degrees here in the Hérault department, that is something of an understatement. In the still-cool morning, thinking about colour. A kitchen window left ajar. Between fly-splattered panes, a burnt green and pink geranium on the exterior window-sill. High above mushroom-coloured rendered façades topped with…
Glug glug glug. Blog May 2018. The following post is sent from out of the dark and lonely, endless depths of evaluating and examining, that are seemingly synonymous with the month of May (and June?) in the French university system and into which I have sunk and am muckily enmired in. Coming up for air.…