Summer 2001 Workshops in Creative Writing

Please click on the links below to access the relevant information:

• Poetry

• Fiction

• Drama

CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY

Regular students, aspiring writers and others are invited to register for a summer workshop in Creative Writing (Poetry) to be directed by award winning poet Kendel Hippolyte who has been described by The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry as 'Perhaps the outstanding poet of his generation.' Born in St. Lucia in 1952, he studied and lived in Jamaica in the 1970s where he explored his talents as a poet, playwright and director. As a poet, his writing ranges across the continuum of language from Standard English to the varieties of Caribbean English and he has written poems in Kwéyòl, the St. Lucian nation language. He has published four books of poetry, the most recent being Birthright (Peepal Tree Press, 1997) and his poetry has appeared in various journals such as The Greenfield Review, The Massachusetts Review, and in anthologies like Caribbean Poetry Now, Voiceprint and West Indian Poetry.  He has experience of poetry workshops as both student and teacher. He has attended workshops taught by poets such as Derek Walcott and Mervyn Morris. He has designed and taught several poetry workshops; the most recent was in April 2000 at Ty Newydd, a well-known writers centre in Wales.  He has twice won the Literature prize in the Minvielle & Chastanet Fine Arts Awards, the premier arts awards scheme in St. Lucia. He has been the recipient of a James Michener Fellowship and an OAS scholarship to study poetry and drama respectively. In 2000 he was awarded the St. Lucia Medal of Merit (Gold)for his contribution to the arts.

The workshop will run for six hours per week from Monday 25. Applicants should have some experience of writing poems and must submit with their application a portfolio consisting of 3-5 poems (totaling not more than 6 pages in all). In the course of the workshop there will be in-class exercises in writing various types of poems as well as assignments to be done at home. Participants will be expected to produce steadily, to read their poems aloud in class, to participate in discussions which readings will provoke, and to produce a dossier of poems. Members of the workshop will have the opportunity to participate in public readings of their creations during the month of July.

CREATIVE WRITING: FICTION

Regular students, aspiring writers, and others are invited to register for the Cave Hill summer workshop in Creative Writing: Fiction. This year's fiction workshop will be led by the Grenadian writer Merle Collins. She is the author of two novels, Angel (1987);and The Colour of Forgetting (1995), a collection of shortstories, Rain Darling (1990) and a collection of poems, Rotten Pomerack (1992). Her work has also been widely anthologised. She teaches Caribbean Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Maryland.

The workshop will run for six hours per week from Monday June 25th to Friday July 27th. Applicants should submit a short piece of creative fiction (max. 10 pages) with their application. Applicants should also be aware that the workshop will make considerable demands on their time, and that they should only apply if able to make the necessary commitment in terms of attendance and participation. They will be expected to produce consistently, and to subject their work to a collective critique by the group. This will be done in a constructive and encouraging manner, and is a necessary part of the process of preparing your work for a wider readership, including a series of public readings, to which all participants will be invited to contribute.

CREATIVE WRITING: DRAMA

Regular students, aspiring playwrights, and others are invited to register for the Cave Hill summer workshop in Creative Writing: Drama. A workshop in writing for the theatre is being offered for the first time in 2001. The workshop will be conducted by the internationally-recognized Guyanese scholar, poet and prize-winning playwright Michael Gilkes. Dr Gilkes was a senior academic for many years here at U.W.I Cave Hill, at the University of Guyana and at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St Lucia. He has several scholarly publications in the field of West Indian Literature, including the seminal study Wilson Harris and the Caribbean Novel (1975), and has also published poems in anthologies and periodicals. Michael Gilkes is renowned as one of the principal figures in Caribbean theatre and film and has himself written several plays, including Couvade: A Dream Play of Guyana (1974) and A Pleasant Career, a play about the life and fiction of Edgar Mittelholzer, which won the prestigious Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992.

The workshop will run for six hours per week from Monday June 25. Applicants should have some experience of play-writing and the theatre and must submit with their application a portfolio consisting of a brief play or sketch, or a scene or two from a longer work that they have written (not more than 20 pages in all). Members of the workshop will be expected to compose theatrical scenes or passages of dramatic dialogue for class discussion and for practical work in the theatre space. Members will produce dossiers of dramatic writing and will also participate in some kind of public dramatic reading(s)or presentation(s) in July, towards the end of the workshop.