New Writing South

Sophie has recently graduated from the University of Brighton where she studied English Literature, and now works for Brighton based registered charity New Writing South where she has been lucky enough to secure the post of Creative Intern. New Writing South is an organisation which supports, inspires and connects creative writers across the South-East, with some fantastic opportunities which may be of interest to current University of Brighton students:

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Submissions for Theatre Royal Brighton Young Writers are open!

Are you 16 – 25 years old and passionate about writing?

The course, led by playwright & director Dinos Aristidou, will give 20 young writers the opportunity to develop their writing and experience what it is to write for, in and about theatre. Sessions are 10am – 12.30pm on alternate Saturdays between September 2014 – May 2015 and will finish with a ‘showing’ of work during Brighton Fringe Festival.

As a Theatre Royal Brighton Young Writer you will have the opportunity to:

  • Further your theatre writing experience (whether playwrighting, reveiwing or press & marketing).
  • Receive mentoring from Dinos Aristidou
  • Meet industry professionals and get industry news and information about writing opportunities and funding
  • See Theatre Royal Brighton shows at a discounted rate.
  • Receive a years free membership to New Writing South
  • Call yourself a Theatre Royal Brighton Young Writer on publicity for your own work, independent of the project

To apply submit a maximum of two A4 sides of creative writing on a subject of your choice. This can be in script format, or could be a short story or poem.

What we want to see is creative flair – no prior experience of writing is needed.

This is a subsidised There are also plenty of other opportunities to get your work heard, including the Worthing Word Festival, Screenwriting, Playwriting, and short story There are also plenty of other opportunities to get your work heard, including the Worthing Word Festival, Screenwriting, Playwriting, and short story competitions. More info here.. More info here. and the fee is £80 for successful applicants. A limited number of bursaries may be available. The closing date for submissions is Friday 20 June 2014; there will be a selection workshop on Saturday 5 July.

Email your work to debo@newwritingsouth.com or post to New Writing South, 9 Jew Street, Brighton BN1 1UT

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There are also plenty of other opportunities to get your work heard, including the Worthing Word Festival, Screenwriting, Playwriting, and short story competitions. More info here.

‘How I like to teach literature’

Richard Jacobs, is the author of A Beginner’s Guide to Critical Reading: an Anthology of Literary Texts, a regular contributor to the knowledge base on teaching literature at 16+, and of course, literature lecturer at Brighton University. Richard’s lectures are always engaging, enjoyable, and interesting, but here’s what he has to say on his approach to teaching the subject:

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How I like to teach literature

 

I like to teach literature in ways that place the text and the students’ responses to the text at the centre of everything I do, for there can be no successful teaching without engaged and energised students.

I like to teach in ways that leave students able to do it without me – where ‘it’ is the individually empowered reading of texts of all kinds because of the collective work of the classroom experience with the particular literary text.

So I like to teach towards making myself effectively redundant for each student.

Activating a process

My sense of how I like to teach literature, as that sense has developed over the last thirty-five years, is not one that feels like imparting a body of knowledge. It’s more about activating a process rather than delivering what the teacher or the course or the assessment system has pre-determined.

It’s not objectives-driven teaching.

Decades ago Lawrence Stenhouse noted that literature teaching, compared to the teaching of other subjects, allows us ‘to specify content, rather than objectives… the content being so structured and infused with criteria that, given good teaching, students’ learning can be treated as outcomes, rather than made the subject of pre-specifications’. But if there is one objective that I have in mind it is this sense of students being able to ‘do it’ without me, to read the world and its texts for themselves.

This is critical literacy and each generation of students needs it more and more urgently. But it’s not a goal or objective that students reach having been through and left behind the process of working on the text; instead it’s that very process of working with texts ‘so structured and infused with criteria’ that materialises the critical literacy.

Virtuous triangle: student text and teacher

Stenhouse’s ‘given good teaching’ does of course beg many questions. And there are three aspects of what I think may together constitute the good teaching that I aim for in my work. These are the virtuous triangle between student, text and teacher; the dynamics of desire; and the roles of narrative – and the three are intimately connected.

A successful literature seminar feels like one where there’s been the maximum energy flowing between student, text, and teacher and flowing in all directions. (For my own part, I have an agenda for the seminar, shared with the students, but it’s more of a flexible group of signposts rather than a fixed march.) The process is active and alive, it is never fully finalised or closed, and if any one of the three sources of energy becomes passive, the process collapses.

To make the text active and alive (as opposed to a museum piece) means it needs to be materialised in the room and this may often mean the teacher making it, or a representative part of it, real by reading or performing, ‘being’ or ‘acting’ the text. And beyond the teaching and learning experience is the future where the teacher drops out of the triangle.

Teaching and reading

A model that has as this goal the dispensing of the teacher’s role might be understood to be one in which teaching and reading are uniquely balanced or even synonymous.

Good teaching and good reading both ask questions that generate not answers (unlike perhaps at school where students expect readings to be answers provided by the teacher) but more and better questions.

The teaching of a text is a reading of the text in an active and transactional process with the student gaining the power to read by questioning in the same way. The reader (student and teacher) acts on the text rather than being passively positioned by it, or by the teacher. The seminar room is like a ‘safe place’, informed crucially by mutual respect and tolerance, where students can feel that everything they say will be valued and acted on, taken up and developed, recognised as provisional and unfinished, as all readings of texts should be. A student award-nominator once wrote that she appreciated above all feeling that nothing she and her friends said in class would ever be looked on as ‘wrong’.

The dynamics of desire

This leads to my second point about the dynamics of desire. Rene Girard argued that desire is imitative and that processes of identification precede desire. As with the virtuous triangle, an activation of desire may be vital for literature teaching to thrive.

Texts desire to be read, the teacher desires the text, the students identify with and become affected by that desire (award-nominators regularly write of the infectiousness of the teacher’s passion for the text), and that in turn re-energises the teacher’s response to the text.

Peter Brooks’ influential Reading for the Plot provides a useful model. He noted that novels begin with the activation of the protagonist’s desire (Freud’s pleasure principle) which is duplicated or mapped onto the reader’s desire to read on. This process is enacted in successful teaching.

Narrative and teaching

Brooks’ argument can be developed for the third of my points, the importance of narrative as a model for the teaching of literature, We could think of a dynamic process in three parts, beginning in the personal (the student reading the text in advance), moving to a communal experience shared in the lecture and seminar, and ultimately returning, with new insight, to the text These correspond to Brooks’ notion of how we negotiate plot as we read novels, the middle sections of which are where the pleasure principle totalises the divagations and digressions that mediate between the linear beginnings and eventually endings where the death instinct as well as the pleasure principle is gratified.

If the experience of the literature lecture and seminar can be seen, taken together, as analogous to the desire involved in reading the extended ‘middle’ of novels, then we can also chart the lecture and seminar, seen separately, as a narrative beginning, middle and end. The (largely) uni-vocal and linear lecture gives way to the populated field of the communally voiced seminar where ‘plot’ diverges and dilates, and then both student and teacher are returned to linearity – another book, better reading, better teaching.

 

‘Small Worlds’ Anthology Launch

Last Friday was the launch of Brighton University Literature Society’s annual creative writing anthology. Entitled ‘Small Worlds’, and featuring fantastic submissions from students across the region, the anthology shows a diverse and imaginative range of poetry and prose, and is a testament to all involved. The launch gave us the opportunity to hear some of the authors read their own work, and indulge in a few celebratory drinks. The winner Ruby Speed’s  brilliant short story ‘The Witch’, is published below.

The Witch

By Ruby Speed

There exists, somewhere, an island with no name which from above seems like an emerald shining a luminous green into the sea-sky. No humans live there, but the jungled forest is full of Witches. The rubber trees on the island live a thousand years, translucent-purple caterpillars as fat as a baby’s arm crawl over moss-covered rocks and tiny deadly flies flicker between pools of white light. Under the vast, dense camouflaged leaves, the forest air is suffocatingly hot and sweat-inducing; you can lose your breath there and never find it again. Deep in the heart of the forest corpse flowers hide intricate, colourful and delicious mushrooms for the Witches to eat, but no humans have ever tasted them. They are horrified by the flowers’ stench of decaying flesh and most flee in horror back to their ships, although it is only a very small number who have ever made it so far into the jungle. Humans are such frightened and stupid little creatures; not many of them have even gazed upon the island. Those who have, return home not with a Witch’s head on a stick, nor stolen exotic spices or fruits, nor impossibly beautiful but silent wives, as they vowed they would, but only with stories and warnings from ‘Witch Island’ and less men than they started their voyages with. The children of the adventurers listen wide eyed, and some won’t sleep for weeks.

Do not think that the Witches are evil, they are not. They did not choose to be Witches any more than you chose to be human, and Witches are the only things they know how to be. And just as the adventurers tell their sons stories to warn them of Witches, the Witches tell their daughters stories to warn them of humans. Both humans and Witches fear the other more than anything, but for very different reasons. Adventurers’ children are afraid of the Witches’ supernatural powers, their sharp teeth and wits. But there are legends which say that if a human boy can make a Witch fall in love with him, she will be transformed from a Witch into a beautiful doll-bride, and that is what all the little Witches were terrified of.

There was one little Witch on the island who had power over all natural things; from conjuring tiny flowers to controlling the forest’s oldest trees and fiercest beasts. Her name was Novi, and her mother was the chief Elder Witch. She was the most beloved and cherished child on the island; a little Witch Princess. On the day of her birth, the other Elder Witches showered the child with gifts; animals to eat with her tiny pointed teeth, a crown made from twisted twigs and the blood of a sacrificed beast which she was to drink. She lived a perfect life, until one day when Novi was little more than a child, and she walked by herself in the heart of the forest. She often wandered alone around the Island, but was forbidden to venture into the centre of the jungle, as her mother warned her:

“If a human finds you in the deepest depths of the forest, they will try to kill you and no one will hear your calls through the trees.”

But Novi was forgetful and distracted; a happy and brave young Witch who often disobeyed her mother’s many rules. Novi played with the pond of water in the very centre of the island, forging little moving figures from the water then watching them melt back into

the turquoise pool. A bird cried in the distance. The sun burned her neck.

And she heard a sound. It did not sound like any bird or insect or creature she had heard before. She paused, with small plants growing silently around her feet. She waited, hunched over, like a tiger waiting to pounce. Nothing happened. She threw a rock into the bushes nearby, and then heard a voice, unlike any she’d heard before.

The voice spoke in a similar language to her, but it spoke in simplistic sentences. She knew it to be the voice of a human invader.

“I…mean…no…harm,” said the voice in a slow, stupid way. “You…” said the human coming out from his hiding place and pointing at Novi, “are very…beautiful…Understand? Beautiful?”

Novi stood still where she was, she knew humans were cunning and evil, and knew this boy was pretending to be stupid. She said nothing and frowned at him.

“You,” he said pointing again, “do amazing things…with the water…very clever tricks”

“Thank you,” she replied reluctantly, “but it’s not actually a trick.”

“Will you show me?” he moved closer “Can you do it again?”

“Of course I can,” Novi retorted, “but you must stay over there where you are.”

The human boy seemed to understand as he stood still, waiting.

Novi regarded him for a moment then continued her water-conjuring. Whilst she did this the boy thought to himself: “What a beautiful and strange girl- I will make her my wife.” Novi had her back turned to the boy now, and concentrated on her little liquid sculptures. The boy approached her silently and took a ring with a tiny red diamond out of his pocket. He had heard the stories too, about Witches turning into good brides, and his father had given him this ring and claimed it would melt any Witch’s heart and make her fall in love. Before Novi could push him away, the boy grabbed her hand and stuck the ring onto her finger. Novi screamed as she saw the ring on her finger, and felt herself start to transform. She felt her skin melt away, and was sure she was becoming a speechless doll-bride. But she looked down at her hands, now covered with thick brown fur. She growled. The boy shrieked and looked up at the bear which now towered above him. She ate him in one mouthful.

Rapturous applause (and wine)

Rapturous applause (and wine)

Ruby Speed and runner up with a copy of the anthology

Ruby Speed and runner up with a copy of the anthology

‘No such thing as sexuality’: Lacan and All Saints’ ‘Pure Shores’

‘There is no such thing as sexuality’, writes the French psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan, a statement hard to swallow in a society seemingly saturated by sex and sexuality. Sex, perhaps more apparent now than ever, seems to be the driving force of life, an integral part of our culture, and the way we come to define ourselves.

Pop music, increasingly, serves as both an outlet and a stage upon which the sexual fantasies of society are exorcised, performed, and consumed. In a recent interview, Lady Gaga told the press how ‘sex is an inspiration for everyone, and I don’t think there is one song that’s ever been written that sex wasn’t a part of. That’s what makes the world go round’.

Modern psychoanalysis, however, reveals these desires as nothing more than an attempt to overcome a sense of incompleteness or lack, and attain an imagined sense of wholeness or unity.

This is exemplified, perhaps surprisingly, by 90s pop sensation All Saints in their hit song ‘Pure Shores’, which merges the notion of sexual conquest with that of self-discovery, and the longing for a sense of home; ‘the beach’.

The beach, the object of desire, at once the lover and a thinly veiled metaphor for the paradise of sexual fulfillment, is searched for ‘along many moors’, ‘through many doors’, ‘across deserts’, across ‘water for miles’, and yet remains fundamentally ‘out of reach’. ‘I’m coming’, repeatedly sing All Saints, a double entendre suggesting both the momentary bliss of orgasm, and the larger never-ending journey towards the beach of eternal bliss.

This beach, we come to learn, is not only unattainable, but also imaginary; the singer(s) having ‘never been here before’ (at a brief moment of arrival, perhaps in a dream, as the lyrics immediately revert to longing once again). This is, as Slavoj Zizek writes, ‘the impossible object cause of desire that inaugurates desire itself’. This object of desire doesn’t exist because it is imaginary, leaving the singer permanently in search ‘of more’, left with an insatiable appetite in the pursuit of perfection, or as Lacan might say, for the lost sense of unity first imagined in the mirror stage of infancy. Hence the beach becomes a place ‘I can call mine’, a place where I can own myself, become autonomous and whole. The journey to the beach becomes an escape from the world of mutability to one of permanence and complete ownership.

The desire for the beach can also be seen as a desire for death. The beach becomes symbolic not just of physical bliss, but the eternal spiritual bliss associated with the afterlife. The beach is heaven, a place where one can stop ‘moving’, ‘coming’, and cease to be.

The notion of an unattainable beyond-space also bears similarities to Lacan’s notion of the Real, that which escapes symbolization, the leftover from reality which language fails to adequately describe. As Sean Homer writes, according to Lacan, ‘the real is that which is unsymbolizable. It is beyond the symbolic and the imaginary and acts as a limit to both’. The sea, the desert, the countless doors through which the singer navigates, can therefore be seen as metaphors for the barren, impotent symbolic order of the world in which we are born, one which can signal obliquely but cannot fully represent the Real. The Beach, and the desire for the beach, is an attempt to mask over this void, or gap in the symbolic order.

Rather than deny the existence of sexual relationships, Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory reveals our sexual desires as always being the manifestation of something else, a deeper, darker desire to achieve a lost unity, which can be found lurking beneath the surface of even the most fatuous of pop songs.

Jack Thurland, 2nd Year English Literature.

The Leonardo Plawrighting Partnership Exchange Trip to Amsterdam

The Leonardo Playwriting Training Partnership is a European project which was initiated by international theatre writer Sara Clifford, and Dr Jess Moriarty. Brighton University has linked with partner organisations in Austria, Amsterdam, Istanbul, and Romania, and the project is an opportunity for both students and staff to learn about the theatre writing cultures of these four countries. Julie Everton took three of her students on her second year module “Writing for Stage, Radio and Screen” to Amsterdam this March. She will be visiting Istanbul with other colleagues in September. Here’s what the students had to say about the trip:

We had a fantastic time in Amsterdam working with extremely enthusiastic people from different cultures; all of whom were contributors of Project Leonardo, and were passionately involved with different aspects of theatre or playwriting. We all met in the MC theatre bright and early on Friday morning, where we heard from Dutch playwrights about theatre in Holland, which turns out is quite different from England to how playwrights and directors work.  One playwright was explaining how he had created a coupling programme for new directors and playwrights. Listening to all the other countries explain the nature of independent theatre and theatre funding was very eye opening and made us realise how much encouragement and opportunities there are for new up and coming playwrights in Britain. As a group we went to restaurants which was a great opportunity to relax and to get to know everyone. There was a brilliant theatre production arranged for the Friday evening, Kate McIntosh performed an eye opening, quirky piece which focused on sounds and collective human spirit. Saturday we met again in the theatre and heard from a young Turkish women, a lecturer and director, who spoke about the  lack of funding and emphasis placed on theatre, and the historical and political reasons behind Turkey’s theatre culture. We also heard from the Romanians and the Austrians on the same topic and we all also spoke about our (comparatively little) experiences and what we hope to achieve. The whole weekend was extremely inspiring and it was great to get to know people so passionate and devoted to their practice and learn from our cultural differences and exchanges. (Gabriella Titcomb)

Students enjoying the local cuisine

Students enjoying the local cuisine

The four day trip to Amsterdam was an amazing experience where we learnt about the theatre and playwriting from the countries of Austria, Romania, Turkey, the UK, and of course, Holland. We met with a talented and enthusiastic group of students and professionals from the industry which was an insightful experience and showed how lucky we are in the UK with the amount of opportunities we have to access. We enjoyed a morning of conversation and group questions from Dutch playwrights on the Friday at the MC theatre. That evening, we attended the Frascati theatre and experienced the All Ears performance by Kate McIntosh, which focused on involving the audience and a being taken on a sound journey. It was a fantastic experience and was useful learning new techniques in theatre. On Saturday we heard from a Turkish playwright who works for one of the universities, and the struggle she faces trying to show theatre in their culture. It was an insightful lecture and I appreciated how lucky we are in the UK with such a broad acceptance of theatre. I would love to visit Istanbul in the future to further my cultural exchange with theatre across the world. The trip was very pleasurable and allowed me to develop my skills and ideas while completing my stage, screen and radio module.​ (Kerry Higgins)

MA Literature & MA Creative Writing: Places still available for Sept. 2014!

Places still available for September 2014 start – two brand new postgraduate courses, MA Literature and MA Creative Writing!

University of Brighton
MA Literature

  • Become an independent researcher through practice-based literary studies
  • Master the art of story-telling in critical, creative, or professional writing
  • Explore the city in literature from the local to the global
  • Develop expertise in cultural and critical theory
  • Partner with highly experienced and supportive tutors
  • Choose from a suite of research-led option modules

[highlight]Explore innovative areas such as Twenty-Frist Century Literature ~ Gender and Performance ~ Ethics of Fiction ~ Black British Writing ~ Literature and Conflict ~ American Poetry ~ Victorian Journalism ~ Screenwriting ~ Writing as a Creative Craft[/highlight]

Find out more: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/literature-ma

 

 

The BIG READ: Meet the Author, Ali Smith

In association with The Mann Booker Prize and University of Brighton, Brighton’s BIG READ for 2013, is Ali Smith’s The Accidental.

The University of Brighton are taking part in a nationwide campaign to share the love of contemporary fiction, regardless of your chosen field of study.

All Freshers are eligible to receive a FREE copy of the The Accidental by Ali Smith.

Events around the book include: meet the author, join critical debates, join informal reading groups

The Accidental

The book follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk. Amber’s arrival has a profound effect on all the family members and consequences of her appearance continue even after the family has returned home to London.

How do I get involved?

You can pick up a copy of The Accidental from the following venues from 30 September 2013:

  • any University Library
  • your Course Leader
  • any students’ union campus office or Welcome Hub

Let us know what you think: You can join the online discussion on #bigreadbrighton.

Get involved with freshers book groups across the university. Find out more by following us on Twitter using #bigreadbrighton and Facebook.

Meet the Author

Join a university-wide event where you can hear directly from Man Booker Prize Shortlisted author Ali Smith about life as a writer of contemporary fiction with a Q&A session about the book.

When? Wednesday 13 November 2013 6pm

Where? TBC

The event is FREE, however booking is required. Booking form coming soon!

ALSO 

Wednesday 6 November 2013 6pm: join a critical discussion group in C218 (Cockcroft building) – ‘Reflections’: Taking a closer look at Ali Smith’s work with Monica Germana and Emily Horton, authors of: Ali Smith: Contemporary Critical Perspectives led by Dr Katy Shaw and the Centre for Twenty-first century writings

The Booker Foundation

Critical discussion groups will also be led by Dr Kate Aughterson and Dr Mark Devenney.

Student-led book groups will encourage new students from across the university to meet each other to discuss the book and develop their interest in literature.

 

 

The Tunisian Revolution: a subjective narrative

Dr Dora Carpenter-Latiri has been senior lecturer at the University of Brighton since 1997 where she teaches literature. She was born in Tunisia, and has lived and studied in Paris.  Her publications deal with language, literature and art.  She is also a photographer.

‘The Tunisian Revolution, a subjective narrative’

In summer 2011, shortly after the Tunisian Revolution I started writing a literary piece which was published in January 2013 (Tunis, Paris: Elyzad). The French title is ‘Un amour de tn. Carnet photographique d’un retour au pays natal après la Révolution.’ and my English working title is ‘tn in love. Photographic notebook of a return to the native land after the Revolution.’
The text can be described as a travel narrative in post-revolution Tunisia; it is also autobiographical and comes as a collection of fragments with photos. I will be talking about the writing process and relate it to the Revolution in progress focusing more specifically on gender, minorities, and the marginalised.

Organised by the Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories

Wednesday 6th November, 5:30-7pm
M2 Boardroom, Grand Parade campus

Work Write Live: with Vanessa Gebbie

workwritelive

We are delighted to welcome Vanessa Gebbie to the University of Brighton.

Vanessa Gebbie has won awards for both short fiction and poetry. Her novel The Coward’s Tale (Bloomsbury 2011/12)  was chosen as a Financial Times Book of the Year. She is author of two collections of short fiction, Words from a Glass Bubble and Storm Warning (Salt Modern Fiction 2008 and 2010). She is also contributing editor of a text book, Short Circuit – Guide to the Art of the Short Story (Salt 2009). The second edition of the text book was published in August 2013. Her poem Immensi tremor oceani was awarded the 2012 Troubadour International Poetry Prize and her poetry pamphlet The Half-life of Fathers is published in September 2013 by Brighton publisher Pighog.

www.vanessagebbie.com

 2p.m. 23rd October 2013.

This event will take place in Room 218 (the Lecture Theatre), Checkland Building, Falmer Campus.

All welcome.

There is no charge for this event, but pre-booking is essential as space is limited.

 

BOOK HERE:
http://shop.brighton.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=5&deptid=3&catid=22&prodid=102

Details of our other courses can be found here:

http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/business-and-community/work-write-live/forthcoming-events

Postponed: Granta Best of Young British 2013

C21 Presents: Granta Best Of Young British 2013 with The British Council

C21

In 1983, Granta devoted an entire issue to new fiction by 20 of the ‘Best of Young British Novelists,’ and did so again 10 years later. From Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, to Zadie Smith, these lists have offered a revealing snapshot of a generation of writers about to come into their own. Join two of the novelists from the 2013 list – Xiaolu Guo and Nadifa Mohamed – for readings and discussion with Dr Katy Shaw, Director of Centre, C21: Centre for Twenty First Century Writings. In partnership with the British Council.

Cost:
£6 full price £4 Students, OAP’s and Unwaged – with valid ID book here
Venue: Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton, 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton, BN2 0JY
 
[box]Please note that the below event has been POSTPONED due to unforeseen circumstances. The event will now take place in December – news of the new date will be circulated shortly[/box]

grantaBOYB