Dear readers,
It has been a year since my article “Doing Academia Differently” was published. Writing the article had been a transformative experience. It inspired me to design my workshops Creative Writing for Academics, and it pushed me to start working as a creative entrepreneur, staying in touch with academia, but from a different position.
While the article was finding its audience, and after I had had the chance to experience the power of making space for researchers to explore their writings in new ways, I experienced one of the most severe winters of my life and had to shut down for a couple of months.
Reading Katherine May’s Wintering helped me make sense of that experience. I loved the way she pays attention to nature’s capacity to adapt to extreme colds. From afar, it then may look as if nothing happens. But when we look closely, we see all kinds of activities going on: burgeons have formed on bare branches, still closed, but ready to burst open when spring comes. Hibernating animals breathe differently, lower their body temperature, change their chemical balance.
Nature doesn’t stop when winter comes. It adapts; it transforms.
So did I, breathing through extreme nauseas, dizziness, and complete exhaustion that came with pregnancy. I entered a subterranean kingdom, a kingdom where time and space function differently. A kingdom of silence. A kingdom of untold stories.
The extremes of being in a woman body is full of silences and is such an untold story. An untold story that I may start writing, bit by bit, as I resurface into the world. Revisiting what it means to be a mother; revisiting what I do for work; finding new patterns in search of equilibriums.
What’s coming up:
And so, we are now a year later, as I gear towards a new season of creation.
These are a sample of activities I look forward to, and I hope to meeting you along the way:
New workshop for grant applicants:
- Thanks to a request from Université Saint Louis Brussels, I’ve developed a new writing workshop for grant applicants. The workshop provides tools to uncover the research proposal’s narrative, one of those tricks that tilt a proposal on top.
Sounds like something for you or for your institute? Contact me!
Creative Writing for Academics:
- I’ll continue providing series of workshop Creative Writing for Academics, with sessions already book for various institutes at the University of Amsterdam, Nijmegen University, and Queen Mary University of London.
These workshops make space for researchers to explore a diverse and creative pallet of writing styles in their academic writing practice. They are open to all disciplines, and welcome researchers from PhD students to full professors.
Sounds like something you need? Contact me!
New concept emerging: The Writing Lab:
- I’m brooding on a new concept: The Writing Lab, a space of regular meetings for researchers to explore their writing in new, creative ways.
Sounds like something you want? Contact me!
Social Dreaming and Poetry:
- Following on previous projects on Social Dreaming, I’ll contribute some of my poems to an artistic exhibition on Social Dreaming held at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. Details will follow, but I already know that the opening is on November 17, 2022.
Regards,
Marie
