Session 1 | Online | 30 August In the first online 3-hour session you will analyse different approaches to writing environmental ecologies drawing on a set of writers who have explored their relationship to landscape from Alexis Wright, to Virginia Woolf, Nan Shepherd, Kathleen Jamie, Olivia Laing, and many more. Then you will chart mind wandering and productive identity deformation and reformation in the consideration of the complexities of being migrated into place. You will consider walking as an affirmative access to planetary thought and feeling, which can be restorative, but also a form of political activism. You will consider what the ethical implications of writing on stolen lands are and express how we might come to negotiate writing place beyond the pastoral. For this session, we will be drawing on my forthcoming book Nothing But a Fine Nerve Meter; New Maps at the Planetary Turn and undertake a few writing exercises together.
Session 2 | In-person | 6 September In the second in-person session we will take a walk in the Yarra Ranges area together to bear witness to this environmental ecology poetically—and precisely. We will undertake field work writing against the romanticisation of wildscapes, but rather in consideration of the impacts of human predation in The Dandenong Ranges, including settler colonisation of the area, the impacts of introduced flora and fauna, and in more recent times the use of glyphosates, as well as littering caused by increasing tourism. We will record in detail the habitat we encounter. We will think about how place influences the way we understand ourselves and how walking a new geographical terrain can help us to change our perspectives.
Students will record their own internal migrations and use this to write a poem or short braided essay.
Feedback Rounds | Online Forum| Due 25 September and 6 October: The last two sessions are written feedback sessions, Natalie will read and provide feedback on two poems of no more than 60 lines or an essay of no more than 2,000 words (1,000 words per feedback round).
After this course you will have a poem or essay ready for submission to literary journals or competitions.
You Will Learn:
- Learn how to ethically represent landscapes in creative writing
- Develop a personal writing practice rooted in ecological awareness
- Receive editorial feedback on a piece towards publication
- Explore the intersections of literature, activism, and environmental philosophy
- Meet fellow writers and take a walk in a wonderful part of Melbourne
For more information, visit writersvictoria.org.au
