Behind the scenes of a community interest small press and writerly observations from our publisher/writer Gret Heffernan. Submissions. Printed Culture. Inspiration.
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A text and collage workshop
Artist Patricia Thornton and I ran Happy Happenstance workshop at Phoenix Art Space, where we had a lovely turnout and great fun reimagining newspaper images and text into poetry. I love examining ordinary sentences in slanted light, mucking about and playing with glue and shapes, drinking tea, eating biscuits, and listening to interesting people tell their stories in the room or on the page.
Pin it on a wall.
Five years ago, I began sticking my poetry to a wall, forsaking frames and pinboards in favor of nails or a clipboard. A poem on the wall probably seems like an inconsequential shift in presentation, but I was surprised at how out-of-sorts it made me feel. When I unpicked that feeling, I realized that I had attached considerable significance to the book format and the sense of seclusion found within its pages. I liked tucking things away, namely myself. I liked a sequence, and some of my most intimate poetry was buffered by other less revealing, safer poems.
A lyric essay, full of poetry and photography, exploring the reasoning behind fanatical and extremist politics and religion in Midwest America.
Nobody, Nowhere, USA is a lyric essay full of poetry and photography, exploring the reasoning behind fanatical and extremist politics and religion in Midwest America. Gret Heffernan was raised a Creationist and a Republican in rural, agricultural Iowa. After university, she moved to London, England, where she became an agnostic and liberal thinker. After a decade, she returns home to help her mother recover from Sepsis. She investigates her own family, past, communities, and ideas for a possible unfractured future with an unbiased honesty that’s raw and necessary for revolutionary compassion.
Writing as Construction/Deconstruction
Thoughts about text after my first attempt at screen printing.
Yesterday, I attended my first screen printing class at East Side Print in Kemptown, Brighton. Screen printing has always intrigued me, and I have countless ideas for screen prints scattered throughout my notebooks. I tend to become fixated on certain turns of phrases or words, and what appeals to me is how the meaning of a word can transform through layering or when combined with an image. How the act of layering or repeating often obliterates the original intent of a phrase.
A note about journaling visual and written imagery.
One of the things I love to do is talk to artists and writers about the sketchbooks and notebooks they keep. I find it fascinating, and without question, every journal I’ve come across is organized in a type of personal code that details the creative process.
How thinking like a screenwriter can improve your novel.
One of the facets that I like the most about scriptwriting is the anticipation of collaborative possibilities between myself as the writer, the actors, the cinematographer, the composer, and the director. While world-building takes place within my mind, the idea of shared responsibility for bringing the characters and story to life is liberating, especially to a novelist who assumes sole authorship of the narrative.
A Comparison of AI Poetry vs. My Poetry
A Human and Chatbot GPT “Experience” the Colour Blue.
I wrote a villanelle about the colour blue and compared it with the one generated by Chatbot GPT. I chose a villanelle because of its notoriously difficult rhyming scheme and the colour blue because I associate it with emotional depth and electrical impulse.
Fénéon, Félix, Novels in Three Lines
Lessons in editing and delay when writing a novel, Fénéon style, and a little bit about how much I love him. Because of, though not limited to, his mad hair. (see what I did?)
In 1906, the daily Parisian newspaper Le Matin published over a thousand faits-divers, novels in three lines, as ‘fillers’ between news stories. These were anonymously written by the war clerk Félix Fénéon, who was also the editor of Revue Blanche. With Debussy as music critic and André Gide as book critic, he was in excellent stylistic company.
Thoughts about the said and the unsaid in novel writing.
I recently ran a creative writing workshop at Spring Gallery alongside our Edgeland Modern exhibition, Back of the Envelope. It was a great success, and so lovely to spend the afternoon drinking tea, making, talking, and writing. I organized the workshop to focus on the idea that there is an unwritten letter in each of us.