An update from our fifteenth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday October 2, plus some of the output published below For today’s Writing Workshop, Conner decided to tweak an old lecture on veering and give it a new spin. To begin, Conner had us choose an object—any object—from the room we were in to write about later. The core concept with which we began the workshop was that “veering” should be seen as a break in the pattern, as any sort of change in direction, a thing we understood to be aesthetically pleasing. To enforce this concept of veering, we looked at a few examples, the first of which being the “I am your father” plot twist from Star Wars and the second being Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. We also looked at examples of narrative veering in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Harry Potter, and The Sword and the Stone. Then, for an example in visual art, we looked at Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. From there, we reinforced the idea that “veering” represents the moment in which a story or poem breaks its most characteristic habit through a reading of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets whose final line completely changed its trajectory. We also looked at the poem “I Know a Man” by Robert Creeley, two haikus by Basho, and examples from Ovid’s Metamorphosis. The Challenge: Write a poem or story that veers off its intended path. Change direction. Change your mind. And use the object that you chose at the beginning of class. The Participants: Clara, Josh, Emma, Lina, Ellie, Simran, Ethan, Alice, Audrey, Shilla, Olivia, Nova, Svitra Emma Hoff, 9(Bronx, NY) Or Rather, the Shape Emma Hoff, 9 Or rather, it was the shape that interested me the most, spin like a top, no, trap it, the base is on the other side. You must understand, dear reader, that there was something that curved (that curved!) in unnatural ways. The black was only a shield, a protector of the young and old, the little. The big were never protected. They had feet. We look inside and we wonder, how do we eat out of this? How do we put food in this and stain it and put it in the dishwasher and torture it, when it was truly meant to be held, not breaking the shield, but held nonetheless, and the patterns and colors make you want to touch cool. I think it is rather beautiful. You touch, you are hot, and it makes a sound. Ring is the sound. But this does not interest me. There is something else that interests me. Or rather, the shape. Ethan Zhang, 9 (McLean, VA) Two Poems Ethan Zhang, 9 The Sound of the Wind I was holding it, An ocarina, An ancient Chinese Instrument. Suddenly It was gone Vanished Replaced magically With a French Horn. Unreal Unrealistic Yet I believed the magic Until The waking Sound of the wind. A Rosy Carpet Outside my window A rosy carpet hovered. It was unreal Absurd And even insane Was what I told Myself. Yet I was convinced It was anything But a fantasy. Carefully I stepped on it Into the misty clouds I rose. The wind brushed my face And I flew, high, high Up and over The steely house The buzzing town
veering
Writing Workshop #36: Veering
An update from our thirty-sixth Writing Workshop! A summary of the workshop held on Saturday March 13, plus some of the output published below “Nowhere is the haphazard and disruptive strangeness of veering perhaps more evident than in the space of literature. Veering involves all sorts of turns, funny and dark and revisionary. Indeed… in a sense veering is what literature is.” -Nicholas Royle, literary critic This week’s Writing Workshop on the art of veering (defined as a sudden change of direction) offered us a sneak peak of author, PhD candidate, and Stone Soup Lecturer Conner Bassett’s upcoming workshop series. We focused on four main types of veering: “the volta”, or poetic turn, “peripeteia,” or a sudden reversal in fortune/change in circumstance, “anagorisis,” or the moment a character discovers who/what they are, and “metamorphosis,” or a literal change in form. For each type of veering there were a multitude of examples within and outside of literature, including Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” James Wright’s poem, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota,” the movement of Cubism, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, among many others. By workshop’s end, we had mastered four new key terms with which to impress our friends, and been inspired, once more, to write! Although everyone wrote something, those who read their work aloud were Rachael, Ismini, Olivia Z, Julia, Sierra, Liam, Peri, Enni, and Lindsay. The Challenge: Using one or more of the four main types of veering, write a story or poem that either changes genre, tone, mood, &/or plot halfway through, or, in which one character changes their mind &/or physical form. You can edit an older piece of writing or start something new! The Participants: Ismini, Georgia, Madeline K, Peri, Leo, Kaidyn, Julia A, Reese, Lindsay, Helen, Ava, Lucy K, Pranjoli, Liam, Margaret, Lena, Samantha, Eve, Lina, Sierra, Nami, Rachael, Maggie, Sophie, Anya, Tegan, Noa, Elbert, Ruhi, Olivia Z, Charlotte K, Sage, Anna, Angela, Tilly, Yasmine, Lucy R, Emma B, Enni, Olivia S, Charlotte M, Jonathan L., Nova Peri Gordon, 11Sherman Oaks, CA Haven Peri Gordon, 11 Peaceful nights Sitting by the ocean, resting on the shore, Watching the moon’s pull capture the waves And release them Peaceful days Watching the tranquil silhouette of a dove As it overlaps, from my angle, with the sun Serene sunrise, serene sunset The breeze of summer dawn Or the chill of winter dusk The sound of the seagulls, The salt of the seawater Overlapping with the sane sound of spring Or the calm cool of autumn But when you’re bursting with anger And hate for humankind Sometimes, the fury can’t be drained By temporary peace So I leave. Liam Hancock, 13Danville, CA Pedestrians Liam Hancock, 13 I sat on the porch where I always sit, wringing sweat from my hands and squinting through the shimmery hot air. Across the street, Miss Reynolds scurried around her front yard in a frilly sunhat, undaunted by the suffocating heat and painted like a tribal warrior, sunscreen unceremoniously streaked across her shriveled old skin. Above the both of us, a clear day was speckled with wisps for clouds and the sun spread its warm embrace across the blue sky like something straight out of the Toy Story intro credits. From a distance, I could briefly make out the deafening rumble of the trucks as they passed by, their tail ends dragging across the gravel, stereos blasting with hard rock that shook our windows, drivers screeching, whooping, laughing as they went along. Miss Reynolds only briefly acknowledged the din with a deep scowl that spread fault lines of wrinkles across her face before returning to her garden with a new urgency. She crossed the crinkled brown grass quickly on shaky legs, water swishing from her can and gathering in brown puddles as she went, ripping through stands of poppies and rosemary bushes that I knew she’d been fostering for years, decades even. At her age, centuries weren’t out of the question. “Miss Reynolds?” I called questioningly. “What’s… uh, you okay over there?” Alarmed, her grey eyes shot up from beneath the brim of her gardening hat, searching my face as if she’d forgotten I was there. “Young’uns,” she cursed beneath her breath. No sooner did she resume her frantic disassembly of the front garden. “Young’uns and their guns’uns, and they’s trucks’ns. Nobody’s got my flowers, you see? Remember that, Velma. ‘Member it when they come.” I bit my lip, learning further back on my palms. “I think it’s better if you head back inside,” I urged her. “Cool down a bit?” “Guns’uns and trucks’uns,” she chanted. It had become some sort of disjointed kind of song. “They’s a big’uns and small’uns, child’uns and wild’uns.” I was just about ready to get up and call the Dementia Center– for the sixth time this month, of course– when the rumbling picked up again. I tilted my head, trying to decipher the skull-crushing music through the jostling of the tires through the scraping of bumpers along a low gravel road through Miss Reynolds’ mumbling, practically yelling now. The strangeness of it all finally worked some movement back into my stiff legs. I stumbled to my feet and tripped down the shallow front steps. Now, the noxious fumes of gas and exhaust was sharp and heavy over the street. Above us, the wisps of clouds, which hadn’t changed one bit, looked somehow different to me. “Those aren’t clouds…” I whispered to myself, panic fluttering in my chest. “It’s smoke!” Miss Reynolds growled, having appeared, pressed against the picket fence with a bundle of flowers and weeds tucked under her arm. She had no more time to explain before the sound of booming punk rock broke our hazy stillness and a fleet of heavyset trucks swerved through the tree line. Terrified, my gaze flew up to that plain, clear Toy Story sky, indifferently gleaming far above the grumbling engines and blasting rock music and somehow still beautiful despite how little it cared
