Sessions 1, 2 & 3

Session 1

Session 1 was about reading closely. We asked people to say if they’d like to read their own writing or bring a piece of writing (of a maximum of 200). We asked people to work in small groups to take turns to read and respond.

Session 2

Session 2 took us through rapid generative writing. We worked with processes inspired by Berlant and Stewart’s workshop The Soup is On as well as Peter Elbow who innovated in academic writing practice in his book Writing Without Teachers (1973). These exercises mirrored those which we undertook during our Hundreds reading and writing group sessions where we worked in cycles of mind mapping as well as automatic writing in order to generate and explore ideas, images, and short pieces of writing.

Laura:

Here’s a short reflection (using the same methods we worked with in the session of course!):

We met (well most of us), without nervous preparation. We drafted spiders, diagrams, and maps. Scratched them on to notebooks and printer paper. We tapped words into lists, long lines, and paragraphs. We embraced pace, looked eager, went blank, and worked it out in the strange space of a muted zoom. We tried to squeeze our workings cheek by jowl with others. Bright post-its and plain text crowded around a tender portrait of a familiar face. We lingered on words and worlds, rocky cadences and smooth rhythms, moods and spaces. We borrowed bits and pulled them into line with our own associations. In that place buttons met bleak hospital interiors, tarnished tin met the soft jersey of a hoodie, the sensation of Autumn met a roll of thunder. We left words and encountered others without further explanation.

Ben:

Coming towards the end of L’s activity, everyone seemingly at relative ease now, as they continued to scribble away in the private space of their individual zoom rooms—posts to the communal jam board arriving like messages from those spaces—I start to read through my notes (I struggle with group writing sessions you see) for the next part of the event: In thinking about ways we might round off L’s writing activity, we felt it would be really great to hear some of what had been written during that process, but in a way that accommodated the whole of the room, or all of the participants, that didn’t put anyone in particular on the spot, and if possible, in a way that respected some of the form/content entanglements that are the inspiration for this reading and writing group. So, first I will describe what we are going to do, and then we will enact that process. This is the description.

So, now, feeling like I ought to feel on the spot, but actually feeling surprising calm after we’d all shared the front and the backs of our hands in V’s warm up exercise, I read the description: So, in order to accommodate all of that, I would like to invite you all to participate in the creation of a collective sound or noise poem. To do this I would like you to select a short section of text, as short as you like but no longer than ten words, from either your own writing from L’s session, or from the writing that is on the jam board. Once you have selected your words, we will unmute our mics, and on the count of three, simultaneously speak them into this collective space. The collective speaking space should be open for ten seconds only. Once that ten seconds is up, please mute yourselves again. When you are choosing your words, think about how they might be best articulated, are they an announcement, a whisper perhaps, expressive, intimate. Due to the fact we are going to speak these words together you will be anonymous, and we aren’t recording, so please be as inventive as you like. For a fraction of a second, the words “exactly how anonymous” flicker across my eyes, before I ask myself the following: How important is it that the unmuting and the muting should remain in the hands of the participants? What is there to be gained from the staggered, ragged edge of this muddy transition? Are these things more or less important because I can imagine the hands unmuting and muting themselves again having met them all up close in V’s activity?

This is now the enactment: Please now select your words. You have sixty…………………….…seconds……….………………..to…………………………………do…………………………………..this……………………………………………………………………….twenty………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..forty……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………sixty………………………………………………………………………..

Please all unmute your mics. On the count of three, please speak your words. After around ten seconds please mute yourselves again: …one…two…three…
……………………………………ten……………….………………….

Session 3

Session 3 was focused on networking. We’d ask people to generate ideas for future activities. These are the activities that cohered and below are the calls we circulated to everyone who expressed interest.