Nos os se mirent à chanter par un samedi matin embrumé. Nous étions sur la route, portant notre poids au-delà de la rivière, tombant sur les pierres. Leur chant se mit à gonfler comme une éponge absorbant le sol, aspirant le flot, transportant les airs, transformant le vent qui tombait sur les branches de notre trachée. Nos os, invisibles à nos yeux, jusqu’à ce que nous tombions brisés. Nos os libérés, nous ne savons plus où mettre nos pieds, à qui tenir la main, où poser notre dos où se reposer. Mais il nous reste l’eau. Elle s’écoule sous notre peau, transportant le sel alluvion de tristesse, elle vient toucher le rebord sculpté de nos yeux. Une larme coule. Une larme sèche. Trace blanche sédimentaire se souvenant du sol, nos os se mettent à bouger, lentement, plus lent que le soleil qui se lève à l’horizon. Personne ne les vit bouger, pourtant ils portaient notre image, émergeant dans la brume, ils frappèrent aux carreaux. Aucun son n’apparut. Nos os se mettent à chanter observant l’intérieur, alors que nous dormons, ils suivent les courbes et les lignes réconciliant les parts de notre corps brisé. Nous posons nos pieds nus sur le sol dur et froid, et frottons notre dos avec la palme de nos mains. La fenêtre était ouverte au réveil ce matin. Marie Beauchamps ©2020
Tag: creative practice
Creative Writing Workshop for Academics: Using Creative Writing as a Tool in Academic Writing
January 19, 2021 10.00 -17.00 (Amsterdam time, UTC +1), on zoom.
Workshop animated by Marie Beauchamps (Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoc fellow, Queen Mary University of London).
This workshop makes space to explore a diverse and creative pallet of writing styles in academic writing practices.
The choices we make when we write have profound effects on the reality that we observe. Giving an account of our observations requires a multitude of styles of writing for achieving the greatest accuracy. Finding the most accurate style of writing for a particular purpose sometimes implies letting go of a seemingly neutral style of writing, instead embracing a plurality of voices, such as staging a dialogue or exploring a more poetic style. This workshop aims to explore what happens when we loosen up the frame of our habitual academic writing practice, inviting multi-layered stories to bubble up and become part of the conversation unfolding on the page.
In this one-day, interactive workshop, I will lead you through a series of hands on exercises to make you experience creative writing within your academic practice. You will practice writing scenes, working with sensory details, defining the main characters driving the story of your work, and staging conversations between them. There will be time for peer-review, and we will take time to reflect on what it takes to make space for creativity within our academic work.
Practicalities:
- The workshop is by now fully booked. I will develop more of these in the future, in different formats. If you are interested to receive future communication about future workshops, please leave your details here: https://forms.gle/TKayfMMo7AjqguYq6.
- Space is limited due to the interactive nature of the workshop. I’m working on adding extra dates in the future. Information will follow in due time. You can leave your contact details via the link above to receive information.
- A zoom link will be sent to registered participants in advance of the workshop.
- Participants are asked to bring a text to work on. It can be an outline, a very first draft, a finished article, or everything in-between, as long as you feel comfortable working with it for the time of the workshop.
If you want to join but cannot attend the full day, please contact me (m.beauchamps@qmul.ac.uk) to discuss alternatives.
I left my self at the door
I left my self at the door this morning
Slammed the door and walked away
It is just a regular day, working
The walls are cold and people are yelling
Didn’t they eat their breakfast on the tray?
I left my self at the door this morning
Twenty-five men enter, crawling
Twenty-five men are washed away
It is just a regular day, working
Did I hear the child calling
When her mother started to pray?
I left my self at the door this morning
My sister came, dad is moaning
The sky is low, the clouds ash-grey
It is just a regular day, working
My neck itches and my legs are falling
On its surface, the skin betrays
I found no-one at the door this evening
Though it was just a regular day, working
London, October 2020. Marie Beauchamps ©
Ode to the Eggs
Fields, beaches, ponds, and trees sing as you fall on twigs and bridles, feathers, moss, sludge, and sandbanks. You hug in groups of seven, thirteen, or fifty-three. Fragile and immobile, you lie side by side, defying your hungry predators. Brown patches or turquoise patterns become a soft embrace, an act of camouflage that protects your burgeons of life from our greedy hands and growling stomachs— nothing can stop our appetite for the vital protein running inside the elliptical shape of your chalky beige shells. In the protected space of your nesting nature, your viscous substance creates— a beating heart, followed by blood vessels, a tail bud, wings and legs, eyes, brains, beaks and claws, feathers and scales. After days or weeks or months, you crack— in the fields, and in the trees, on beaches and in the reeds, creatures crawl, squawk and walk tasting the air and the nourishing juice of food. Now rack and ruin you stay behind as little dirty white dots, composing compost, sand and soil. Carried along by flowing water, you become fertile ground, sediments, and the source of a new cycle of life.
London. September 2020. Inpired by Pablo Neruda’s Ode to the Tomato and Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market.