I’ve been thinking of what poetry can and can’t do in a week which saw both Amanda Gorman, the USA youth poet laureate, performing her poem at the inauguration ceremony of President Biden in Washington, and a reading by the ten poets short-listed for the T.S. Eliot prize in the UK. The German philosopher, Theoodre […]
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I critique as I read so you get my thoughts as I go. (Big smiley emoji). Excitement welled in my chest. I’d spent years writing my novel, and I was so proud of it. I’d found a critique group, posted my first chapter, and here it was: my very first critique. I could see it […]
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I am sure as a distance learner, you’ll likely be used to incorporating different technologies into your learning experience – I was certainly Zooming ‘before it was cool’ thanks to OCA meetings and I can’t help but notice how many learning tools we seem to be early adopters of. We’re also lucky to have […]
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It’s that time of year again – when we all promise we will rid ourselves of bad habits and become better people. But for writers, good people can be poor characters: it’s the flaws we’re all interested in. All crimes, for instance, can begin with one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and they may make […]
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If someone were to write a book of ‘Lessons from Lockdown’ – and I am sure they will! – then surely one of the most important is how much we should value the arts. How many of us were comforted during the worst times by reading, music or visual art or by being able to […]
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When practicing writing visual descriptions, the scriptwriter works towards applying the few technical rules that are required by scriptwriting standards: scene heading with indication of time and space use of active verbs in the present tense brief paragraphs no camera directions describe only what can be seen and heard Their application aims at shaping the […]
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A long time ago… Back in autumn 2019 – which feels like a galaxy far, far away – OCA first piloted online submissions for the Creative Writing degree. It made sense: writers are used to submitting work electronically, for competitions and to agents or publishers. Very few organisations expect hard copies of writing work these […]
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There’s a wonderful clip on YouTube that shows an octopus disappearing into the background and becoming, as a consequence, invisible. This is an attribute shared by other cephalopods such as the cuttlefish, one of which I met whilst snorkelling in Indonesia. The water there is very clear, and the colourful marine life is plentiful and […]
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If visual artists can make collages out of previously-existing materials, and musicians can compose pieces out of sampling and remixing, then why can’t poets ‘remix’ a text through erasure?
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I’ve been thinking about the senses recently. Kit de Waal claimed in a Guardian interview about her reading habits that audio books were now her preferred way of reading.
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