#twuc

[gregsantospoet]

Thank you to some of Canada’s poets laureate (Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Fiona Tinwei Lam, and A.F. Moritz) for joining me as part of April 13 “Poetry and Place” webinar. We had an enlightening discussion and it was an honour to be the moderator for the event. Many thanks to the Writers Union of Canada for hosting us! #NationalPoetryMonth #NPM23 #TWUC https://www.instagram.com/p/CrBU7A4t2uh3CoKaAvjtb6JqDw6qZQKDB2G3hk0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[scifrey]

I came home to a very pleasant surprise this evening! It is my fifth anniversary as a member of #TheWritersUnionofCanada, and they sent me one of my very favorite things to celebrate: a pin! Thanks, #TWUC, for everything you do for us #writers and for the community you build among us. . . . #amwriting #ReadTheNorth #IReadCanadian #IReadCanadianDay #CanadianAuthor #WritingCommunity #CanWrite https://www.instagram.com/p/CfnC_QEtZNy/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[vraeyda]

And Lindsay Nixon is the 2019 Dayne Oglivie Award Winner! Awesome work!! #twuc #authorlife #onwords2019 #dayneogilvie #dayneogilvieprize #writerstrustofcanada https://www.instagram.com/p/ByLpYYpAuYE/?igshid=dcox2oieqim6

[saphaburnell]

Shut Up and Write Pitt Meadows 2

Welcome back to SUaW Pitt Meadows Edition!

Thank you for joining us on our mission to increase writing productivity and push through any writing blocks. Shut Up and Write is a free proprietary method and system developed by writers for writers. Below is an inspirational piece from Brenda Miller & Suzanne Paola's Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, and a Writing Prompt if you want a boost of inspiration. 

Enjoy, and see you there! 

Sapha Burnell

Writing Prompt

"Blind eyes behind tight blue cloth.

Evergreens on the breeze.

A purple sky."

Why Shut Up And Write?

Writing is a solitary affair, in which we create worlds and images out of the fabric of our individual minds. Yet, the human being is a social beast, given to eccentricities and even illness in isolation. 

Shut Up And Write is an attempt at communal focus, building a community of like-minds, who write their own individual projects in the same space of accountability. 

This space does not have to inhabit the physical plane, but can be a mental space, a slice of time we sit down to write. The point is to keep accountable to each other, to have a place to jam. Hopefully, by joining with this free society of writers, unencumbered by critique, we will write more, find our rhythm and flow into new works with ease. 

I hope to see you here, and if you can't make it, I hope to see you're writing! Send me a Tweet, Hit me up on Facebook, let us know what's happening with you. 

Writing Inspiration

This second writing inspiration minute comes from Brenda Miller & Suzanne Paola Tell It Slant (McGraw-Hill, 2005). If you have a writing inspiration you'd like to share with the group, please contact me and I'll put it in the rotation. We have such a wealth of experience and wonder in the BC & Yukon Region of The Writers' Union of Canada, I'd love to hear what you all have to say. 

"Tell all the truth, but tell it slant."

Emily Dickinson

A Few Caveats About Writing From Life

"Creative nonfiction is a tricky business. On the one hand, you have the challenge - and the thrill- of turning real life into art. But on the other hand, you have to deal with all the issues that come attached with that "real life". When a fiction writer wants her character to remember the first time she ate ice cream, she can enter the problem imaginatively: place the character at Coney Island with a melting chocolate cone or at a birthday party with a neat scoop on a slice of cake. Can you do the same thing when you're writing from your own memory, even when you don't exactly remember the scene? A fiction writer is able to create the set amount of characters necessary for the story's action; can you do the same thing with the characters you encounter in your own life and research? When a fiction writer needs dialogue, she writes dialogue. As a non-fiction writer, can you make up dialogue you don't remember verbatim? When you're writing essays based on research, how much of your imagination can you use? Does "nonfiction" mean "no fiction"?

The self inhabits the prose of creative nonfiction, whether or not you write directly about your own experiences. It is the "I" that picks and chooses among the facts. This "I" re-creates those essential scenes and makes crucial decisions about what to include and what to exclude. The "I" decides on the opening line that will set up the voice of the piece, the essential themes and metaphors. The "I" gives the essay its' personality, both literally and figuratively. The essential question, then, is how do you create a piece inhabited by the self without becoming self-centred? And how do you negotiate all the ethical and technical obstacles that come with writing from real life?"

(Tell It Slant, page 75)

Let's take these weekly sessions to remember the joy of writing. The passion and fortitude of our brethren, who put ink to page and black scratches on blank document screens. We can and will succeed. We can and will create beautiful, poetic, refined works of literature. 

One week at a time, we can Shut Up and Write. 

Sapha Burnell

[payneswhite]

4/4

Chapter 1. The Wake Up Call

|First| |Previous| |Next|

[jessieboulard]

New cover for Write magazine! #winter2018 #freelance #illustration #design #art #coverart #magazinecover #twuc #butterfly #monarch #ink #rebirth #poetry #light #dark #embers #phoenix #hireme #passion #work

[polymathjournal]

[macromicrocosm]

Although we are not affiliated with The Writers Union of Canada (they rock, every Canadian writer should be a member), we totally dig their Short Prose Competition.

You have time. Apply!

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Cultural appropriation should be easy to point out. Someone from your old high school dressing up as a "Mexican" for Halloween, a white girl wearing a bindi at Coachella, the white dude with dreads teaching some sort of bootleg yoga, Iggy Azalea. But for senior people in Canadian media, this is still a confusing topic and that's why a whole bunch of the powerful editors in the country got together this week to argue: "you know what, cultural appropriation is pretty tight."

Earlier this week, The Writers' Union of Canada — an organization that according to their website "promotes the rights, freedoms, and economic well-being of all writers" found itself in the position of apologizing for an editor's defence of cultural appropriation. Making matters dumber, the controversial piece appeared in the organization's quarterly publication, Write Magazine, whose latest issue was all about Indigenous writing.

In an opinion piece called, "Winning the Appropriation Prize" Write Magazine editor Hal Niedzviecki took the bold stance of not believing in cultural appropriation. If that sounds like an editorialized version of what he said, I assure you it's literally how he opened the essay, writing, "I don't believe in cultural appropriation."

Niedzviecki then went on to say, "Anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities." But he doesn't stop there, "There should even be an award for doing so — the Appropriation Prize for best book by an author who writes about people who aren't even remotely like her or him." Oh yes, he went there. Essentially, the argument was that Canadian literature isn't as diverse as it should be because white authors aren't stepping outside of their own experiences.

Niedzviecki was obviously called out by members of the union and Indigenous authors featured in the magazine's issue (one of the first writers to call the magazine out had also been published in the same issue with a piece about cultural appropriation). Following the controversy, The Writers' Union of Canadaissued a statement on their website, apologizing "unequivocally" for the mistake and announcing Niedzviecki's resignation.

Speaking to The Globe and Mail Niedzviecki expressed how he, "had no intention of offending anyone with the article," while also telling the paper he stepped down from his position voluntarily. He admitted he understood why people were upset and said he failed "to recognize how charged the term cultural appropriation is and how deeply painful acts of cultural appropriation have been to Indigenous people."

Like all media controversies, this could have ended pretty quickly. While TWUC released the only type of statement they could have after messing up that badly, Niedzviecki could've offered a lengthy and selfless public apology alongside his resignation. But it didn't take long for white Canadian writers to jump to Niedzviecki's defense. The Globe and Mail's Elizabeth Renzetti offered the lukewarm argument of the piece being insightful—in that it created a debate. The National Post's Christie Blatchford went full Blatch and argued thatNiedzviecki was being "silenced" and that he joined the ranks of white people who've been bullied into apologizing (something he actually never did publicly).

But just as it almost fizzled out thanks to the vicious half-life of the news cycle, a bunch of high-ranking members of Canadian media—all white—decided to go lose their shit on Twitter.

Continue Reading.

[gregsantospoet]

I’m honoured to be moderating this upcoming webinar on Thursday, April 13 at 2pm ET with some of Canada’s poets laureate from different cities across the country. $10 registration. Free for TWUC and @canadianpoets members. . . . #nationalpoetrymonth #npm23 #gregsantospoetry #poetry #canadianpoets #poetleaureate #twuc #webinar https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq5kfMtsGcLdejAoqgSKS1_8FGG9mZVnADlPdg0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[femmesfollesnebraska]

ARTIST-POET COLLABORATION: TATIANA ARSĒNIE & IRINA MOGA

OLD HOUSE

There was the time we spent together: time made of puffed up silences, suspended - just like the branches of the trees and the effaced gambrel of the roof.

Eroded shapes, bearing the brunt of our words; salty marshes in the distance, closing in on the sea that we knew would be a possible exit.

An old house, with boarded up windows and doors and creaking baseboards; tiny pieces of sand dollars nestled between rusted hinges and locks.

But there was no immediate sea, of course.

 BEACHHEAD

The moon behind your shadow: a windmill of clouds, fragmented.

It feels as if I have come ashore after a long absence, trekking through green algae and inverted flower capsules.

You are here: I’ve reached the beachhead of your presence.

TALL GRASS

The day you left, I was busy gardening - all rhizomes, breathing in the spring dust.

Or… this was just a frame I later used to scribble my grief on, amid iris bulbs and never ending, tall grass.

-

About the Authors:

Tatiana Arsénie lives in Germany and has had numerous personal and group exhibitions. She specializes in painting, urban landscapes, graphics and byzantine painting.

Tatiana’s drawings of Berlin have earned her praise for the accuracy of the details and the enigmatic overtones which are the hallmark of her artistic flair.

Irina Moga lives in Canada and is a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC).

Irina has previously published two poetry books in Romania; her poems have appeared in literary magazines in Canada and the US.

Website: http://www.irinamoga.com

Twitter: @pictopoems

~

Les Femmes Folles is a volunteer organization founded in 2011 with the mission to support and promote women in all forms, styles and levels of art from around the world with the online journal, print annuals, exhibitions and events; originally inspired by artist Wanda Ewing and her curated exhibit by the name Les Femmes Folles (Wild Women). LFF was created and is curated by Sally Deskins.  LFF Booksis a micro-feminist press that publishes 1-2 books per year by the creators of Les Femmes Folles including the award-winning Intimates & Fools (Laura Madeline Wiseman, 2014) , The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Laura Madeline Wiseman/Lauren Rinaldi, 2015 and Mes Predices (catalog of art/writing by Marie Peter Toltz, 2017).Other titles include Les Femmes Folles: The Women 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 available on blurb.com, including art, poetry and interview excerpts from women artists. A portion of the proceeds from LFF books and products benefit the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Wanda Ewing Scholarship Fund.

Current call for collaborative art-writing: http://femmesfollesnebraska.tumblr.com/post/181376606692/lff-2019-artistpoet-collaborations

https://www.facebook.com/femmesfolles

[vraeyda]

Dane Ogilvie Award 2019! Halleloo #lgbtq🌈 #oneofus #canlit #writerstrustofcanada #literaryaward #authorlife #twuc #onwords2019 https://www.instagram.com/p/ByLnRHpAQOC/?igshid=12xw2y9ebt8er

[moneyheadquarter-blog]

$2,500 PRIZE IN TWUC SHORT PROSE COMPETITION @CANADA.

Deadline :

February 15, 2019.

More :

https://moneyheadquarter.com/2500-prize-in-twuc-short-prose-competition-canada/

[atimo-taguy]

You dig through your library and find Wacousta sitting in front of you, to its left, The Edible Woman, and to its right, In the Village of Viger; stacked atop these: Street of Riches, Bear, Life of Pi, Roughing It In The Bush, Wild Animals I Have Known. You open any of these books and see yourself, think, “here I am, god it feels good to be Canadian”—even if these authors appropriated Indigeneity to gift you a feel-good story (think Beauty and the Makwa), even if their words were crafted on colonized land, even if their mirrors are adorned with quill and bones (that’s paleontology). I open these books, novels I’ve been forced to study for three degrees over eight years, and see a stark-hot whiteness, see a wrought NDN like a stamped, trampled piece of sheet metal punched again-again-again into a shapeless mould. I throw these books into the corner of my room and behind them find: Tekahionwake, Joy Harjo, Maria Campbell, Rita Joe, Beth Brant, Tomson Highway, Sharon Proulx-Turner, Lee Maracle, Katherena Vermette, Rosanna Deerchild and think “here I am.” What makes Canadian literature a thing? Who is CanLit? Is it not a nation-building project? Then too is it not a settler colonial project? I think of Margery Fee who argued that literature is a land claim. Where do I fit in? Where do we fit in? Is there room in CanLit for the Indigenous? And, perhaps, the more important thing to ponder is: do I even want it?

I’m writing this in response to The Writers’ Union of Canada and Hal Niedzviecki in particular. You may think I hate you, I don’t, but I am deeply troubled and upset by your contributions. You, Hal, are wrong—appropriation is real. Tell me how you could write something after each of your contributors spoke vehemently about appropriation? I know you’ve read my piece because you edited my calling out of Anita Daher naming TWUC community a “tribe” and changed Indigiqueer to Indigequeer (both without my permission may I add). I can’t tell if that’s just ignorance or laziness? I’ll leave that for you to answer. While you wrote “Winning the Appropriation Prize” I scrolled through my social media feeds and saw appropriation working at its finest: Tanya Tagaq arguing against a white boy band named Get Inuit, I see Amanda PL capitalizing off of Norval Morrisseau, see Zach McGowan starring in Ni’ihau—tell me what isn’t real about that? How does this continue? I see this happening everywhere, every day, and yet we keep on getting the recycled excuse, “I just didn’t know.” That may be, but do better, do your research, do—my two degrees tell me I had to. That excuse isn’t enough anymore. Ignorance is a tactic best maintained by privilege and while it may be bliss for you it’s a death-sentence for me; bliss is a space of comfort for yoga-posing-eat-pray-loving white settlers who enjoy privilege as if it were a resort buffet, what’s bliss about a bought space, an inheritance? Again, it’s not enough. Ignorance is not indemnity and no longer stands as an apology I’m willing to accept—do your homework before you come for me, before you enter this gladiatorial arena incited with TWUC since ‘93. If ignorance is a buffet, well, it’s a dish best served dead. I’m sorry if my Indigeneity is indignity to you, a shame, but hey, that’s a gift from me to you. Shame was an energizer for me to come into myself—maybe it’ll work for you too?

[saphaburnell]

Shut Up and Write Pitt Meadows:

Welcome to SUaW Pitt Meadows Edition!

Thank you for joining us today on our mission to increase writing productivity and push through any blocks along the way. Shut Up and Write is a free proprietary method and system developed by writers for writers. As an introduction to the method (which may be new for a lot of you), I've included... their introduction. I've also put up a Writing Prompt, in case you want that extra bit of inspiration, and an inspirational piece from Sophy Burnham's book For Writers Only. 

Enjoy, and see you there! 

Sapha Burnell

Writing Prompt

"The scent of coffee. Warm hands folding over frigid fingers.

A dark wooden table. Sunlight warming her skin."

Introduction to Shut Up and Write

"Writing is hard.

A blank page can be one of the scariest things in the world. You know what you like to read and you know what you want your writing to be. But, when you sit down to commit words to the page, you find yourself typing out a homely caricature of your idea.

Every writer has been there, and for most of us, the problem never goes away completely. That's just the nature of writing a rough draft. It's messy, it's ugly, and with the wrong attitude, it can be downright demoralizing. The only solution is to change your expectations and learn to love the mess.

We started Shut Up and Write! in 2007 to create a social, supportive place where we could help each other through this turbulent stage of the writing process. Since the, we've grown into an international community of writers who have committed to nurturing a simple habit—to meet for one hour each week and make progress on our writing goals.”      Shut Up and Write Method Introduction

Writing Inspiration

This first writing inspiration minute comes from Sophy Burnham's For Writers Only. If you have a writing inspiration you'd like to share with the group, please contact me and I'll put it in the rotation. We have such a wealth of experience and wonder in the BC & Yukon Region of The Writers' Union of Canada, I'd love to hear what you all have to say. 

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men - that is genius."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nerves

"Not long ago, a friend from California came to visit. He is a professional writer and the author of seven books. He had just finished his latest, a long and exhaustive memoir on which he had spent eight years and thousands of dollars in therapy. It was to be published the following year. We sat in the summer garden. He was sunk in apathy and despair.. 

"What is it about writing?" he asked, striking his forehead with the flat of his hand. "Why is it so awful? It's no way to live! Why do we do it?"

And then he leapt to his feet to walk unhappily around his chair. "Look at writers. I don't know a single writer who doesn't hate his work. Writers hate writing. They're always talking about how hard it is. Artists don't hate painting. You never hear an artist talking about how much he hates his work. Sculptors don't complain all the time about how hard they find sculpting. But writers...!" 

A few weeks later I had occasion to ask an artist if she agreed. Do artists hate their work? She looked at me, amused. 

"You're forgetting something," she said. 

"What?"

"Writing is so powerful. People rarely look at a painting and weep.""

(For Writers Only, page 1 & 3)

Let's take these weekly sessions to remember the joy of writing. The passion and fortitude of our brethren, who put ink to page and black scratches on blank document screens. We can and will succeed. We can and will create beautiful, poetic, refined works of literature. 

One week at a time, we can Shut Up and Write. 

Sapha Burnell

[payneswhite]

2/4

Chapter 1. The Wake Up Call

|First| |Previous| |Next|