King Island District High school students experiencing the joy of word play
King Island District High School students have today enjoyed a creative writing workshop delivered by Dr Teresa Bell. Teresa is a writer and teacher based in Port Macquarie. With a Doctorate in Creative Writing and three published books, her latest novel; LUNATION was shortlisted for the 2018 Dorothy Hewett Award ahead of its release in January.
Teresa, in explaining the workshop process, said:
“There is a widespread belief in the power of imagination and creativity to unmake loneliness. To transform our reality to something new, to play with words and paint and ideas to relieve, re-imagine or revitalise the future and the past. What remains of a society is often only the art: the stories that were written down, the marks that were painted.
When children play they are doing exactly what this workshop asks the creative writing student to do. To not judge the prose that is created by rules that they have learned in any other context; to start with just a pen, a page and a desire to reflect on your own individual experience.
Your own point of view and experience of something will always be true and unique. A story in which a character takes an idiosyncratic attitude to life on an island is much more interesting than a generic one that is read in a glossy travel brochure.
This writing workshop will encourage students to find a way to play with words and generate their own stories, liberating themselves from the ideas of rules within creative writing and experiencing the joy of word play.”
Teresa is on Island as a visiting Artist in Residence at the King Island Cultural Centre, developing a new work based on Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, which will premiere at The Boathouse on Sunday 16 December. For more information, see below:
