Prompts/Prompted Reading

Saturday, September 23rd 7 pm
Quimby’s Bookstore

1854 W. North Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622,
773-342-0910

The Creative Writing Guild presents it’s latest publication, Prompts/Prompted. The dual issue is a compilation of instructions for experimental writing, and the CWG’s own written results. Five CWG contributors will read selections from the books, explain instructions, and share recent summer writing. Bring a pen and paper.

Publishing the Unpublishable

I just came upon Ubu Editions publishing the unpublishable which is now home to some PDFs of interesting work by much loved authors in the same sensibility as this blog for sharing work that is not always the great masterpeice.

"The web is a perfect place to test the limits of unpublishability. With no printing, design or distribution costs, we are free to explore that which would never have been feasible, economically and aesthetically. While this exercise began as an exploration and provocation, the resultant texts are unusually rich; what we once considered to be our trash may, after all, turn out to be our greatest treasure."

http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub.html

Gotta Love New Books

Happy Belated Independence Day everyone!!

Well, I'm guessing a lot of people are too overstuffed from food dyed (or naturally) red, white, and blue to really notice, but since it's been over a month since the last post I thought it was somewhat worth mentioning. Haha.

Anyway, I hope everyone's been pretty engrossed in their summer reads (I found it quite novel - pun intended - that I now have time to read EVERYTHING I WANT to read), but if you have a little more time and a little over $10 to spare (it's on sale right now at Amazon.com), you can support SAIC's writing faculty Jesse Ball by buying his new novel The Curfew.

Jesse was one of my professors during my sophomore year at SAIC, and he taught a writing workshop called "Slotted Wooden Box". It was kind of surreal yet entertaining, because he made the workshop sound like an embarkment of self-discovery or something. He'd also come late to class and excuse himself by telling stories of how he'd come across a person lying on the ground as if they were unconscious, but since he told it too many times I kind of suspected him of telling tales. Not that anyone called him out on it, because it was a writing workshop class. And telling stories is what he's paid to do.

Anyway. To be honest, I wish I could say I've read The Curfew, but because I haven't I won't pretend that I have and blurb a paraphrased version of another summary I've read online. So check it out for yourselves! And if you do read it, let me know whether Jesse lives up to expectations or not.

- Nicola

Prompts/Prompted

CWG's dual prompt book is now finished. "Prompts" is a collection of prompts, written as a series of instructions for generative writing. "Prompted" is a 50 page compilation of work from the past year, written from those prompts.

At some point there will be a reading of the work, stay tuned. In the mean time you may contact

Jeypeg@yahoo.com to obtain a copy.









































The prompts were written by anyone who was active at a CWG writing meeting, but largely compiled from:
Cait Stephens
Nicola Tsoi
Jeff Sherfey
Ian Endsley
Jais Grossman
and
Ziyuan Wang

The Best of CWG Radio

Thanks to much help from the faculty and staff at SAIC, and it's wonderful members, CWG has published an audio compilation of student work played on our weekly radio show.

To obtain a copy of the CD, please e-mail Jeypeg@yahoo.com

You can listen, download, and share the CD here.
*All work copyright it's author.

Meeting on the 13th floor lounge, Mondays, 4:15pm

We Are Not Alone

I just found this great site full of constraints.

They put out a prompt challenge and see what words come back.


While digging for prompt, I came across these guys, and that is about the only description of them I can provide for you- that are in love with twenty consonant poetry. Don't know what that is? It's a writing constraint where you use every consonant once while using vowels freely (considering Y to be a vowel). I thought you might enjoy their website, which is weird and whimsical, and full of odd poetry, drawings, essays, a link to their small press, and audio recordings of their twenty consonant poems. Check it.

http://www.spinelessbooks.com/20/index.html

Spring Publication

"Back" has hit the shelves- look for it around campus, if you can't
find a copy read it here, or e-mail CWG@saic.edu.

Back

Submissions for the Spring 201 publication "Back" are due tomorrow, by midnight. Anyone is eligible to submit. CWG is also always accepting audio works for our radio show, collaborations and new members, other written fodder for our website, and facebook pokes.

Send mp3's, PDF's, or Word docs, with your name and title to CWG@saic.edu

back 1 (bk)
n.
1.
a. The posterior portion of the trunk of the human body between the neck and the pelvis; the dorsum.
b. The analogous dorsal region in other animals.
2. The backbone or spine.
3. The part or area farthest from the front.
4. The part opposite to or behind that adapted for view or use: the back of the hand; wrote on the back of the photograph.
5. The reverse side, as of a coin.
6. A part that supports or strengthens from the rear: the back of a couch.
7.
a. The part of a book where the pages are stitched or glued together into the binding.
b. The binding itself.
8. Sports
a. A player who takes a position behind the front line of other players in certain games, such as football and soccer.
b. This playing position.
v. backed, back·ing, backs
v.tr.
1. To cause to move backward or in a reverse direction: Back the car up and then make the turn.
2. To furnish or strengthen with a back or backing.
3. To provide with financial or moral support; support or endorse: Unions backed the pro-labor candidate. See Synonyms at support.
4. To provide with musical accompaniment. Often used with up.
5. To bet or wager on.
6. To adduce evidence in support of; substantiate: backed the argument with facts.
7. To form the back or background of: Snowcapped mountains back the village.
v.intr.
1. To move backward: backed out of the garage.
2. To shift to a counterclockwise direction. Used of the wind.
adj.
1. Located or placed in the rear: Deliveries should be made at the back entrance.
2. Distant from a center of activity; remote.
3. Of a past date; not current: a back issue of a periodical.
4. Being owed or due from an earlier time; in arrears: back pay.
5. Being in a backward direction.
6. Linguistics Pronounced with the back of the tongue, as oo in cool. Used of vowels.
adv.
1. At, to, or toward the rear or back; backward.
2. In, to, or toward a former location: went back for the class reunion.
3. In, to, or toward a former condition.
4. In, to, or toward a past time.
5. In reserve or concealment.
6. In check or under restraint: Barriers held the crowd back.
7. In reply or return.

-Cait

Don't Miss This fo' Real

Are Lyrics Poems? Vice Versa? No Vice Versa?

On a more recent note, here's what we did on the 22nd of March during the meeting! A prompt suggested by Cait herself. She was in a musical mood (due to her class), and this was one of the results. Her prompt basically consisted of writing a phrase, a question and something autobiographical, then passing this on to the next person, he/she will write a line below each category that would contradict the previous line. So on and so forth. When everyone had a turn on each sheet of paper, the original author had to take these lines and restructure it accordingly. Fun!!



Unwanted Advice

Lime juice in the eye stings.
Bees in your mouth, stroking your tongue.
Everyday, the same old things.
Cows in the house, smells like dung.
But the same old things are always new.

Is it possible to hug death?
Can I return your breath?
Why did you refuse?
Why do you suffer abuse
Don't tell me what to do, Kurt.

My cheese has gone cold.
My stomach's full of mold.
The sky's falling down (repeat line forever. Fade out).



There will also be a spoken version of all these works. Tune in to SAIC Freeradio to hear them!! Thursdays from 6-8pm, brought to you by the CWG.

Digging up the Past

Hello everyone!!

This post is about 2-3 months late, but meh. XD Based on the exquisite corpse prompt we had during one of our meetings, where our faculty advisor Sherry gave each person a one-line prompt (these lines were taken from a book she chose). Each person then wrote 2 lines in response to the previous one, then folded the paper down so only the most recent line was visible. This went on until we reached the 20th line.

I call this piece "Brooklyn Bridge".

1. Who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge?
2. Who wandered for so long, through the aimless paths of New York?
3. He's done it for so long that he's left everything behind, weightless now.
4. And good flight comes of that, he knows,
5. so he prepares for heights and clouds.
6. By gathering stilts and ladders, a hot air balloon and a cherry picker.
7. He grabs his camera and sets off to prove there is a God in heaven.
8. Click, click, click, click. It doesn't matter how many lines you push, it's out.
9. It's repetitive sounding, your name. No pleasure.
10. But it means that now, I can't get it out of my head.
11. I suppose that's why I think you're so annoying.
12. The feeling sand, like water into sand.
13. The breeze cleanses all woe, all worry, all sinuses
14. and never sneezed again.
15. My nose was made into a massive clean tunnel.
16. Vast evacuation of the senses
17. ready to accept new organic crusts, drops, and outside information.
18. He coughed, spit that had been hanging on his teeth, flew free.
19. His wife wiped her eyes. Alone, she fingered the buttons on the remote.
20. And then, herself.

Spring

Times and dates for spring:

Weekly meetings: Mondays from 4:30-6ish in the 13th fl lounge of the Michigan bld.

Radio show: Airs live every Thursday from 6-8ish, on freeradio saic. http://www.freeradiosaic.org/radio/shows/134/
As always, the shows are archived on the blog under the "RADIO" tab.

Our next publication is themed "Back"
The deadline is March 24th.

E-mail submissions for the publication or the radio show to Jeypeg@yahoo.com



Also don't forget about the BFAW publication- "MOUTH" for students in the writing department. Send your submissions for that to saicmouth.gmail.com


see you Monday!

Reading

MFA Reading tomorrow night-

MFA Writing Program
Fall Graduating Student Reading

Shanita Bigelow
Monica Hillerman
Gregory Kiewiet
Cynthia (Cina) Pelayo

Thu Dec 16 5:30pm – 7pm
Sullivan Center Conference Room, 33 South State Street, 7th floor

Something To Do

Indie Lit Roadshow- This Sunday @ The Green Lantern Gallery

ALL DAY! 10am-10pm

Deadline

Submissions for Cut/Paste are due at Midnight this Mon, Nov 15th.

Anyone is welcome to submit work. We accept any printable material, image, text, fiction, poem, play, with the theme of cutting and pasting.
If you haven’t written anything yet you’ve got 26 glorious hours to do so. Imagine what you could make if you spent the next 26 hours writing?!


Some definitions for cut/paste that have occurred while thinking about this publication:
-Physical cutting and pasting, with scissors and paper
-Glue(s)
- Glue, by Keith Godard
-Image maps by Bonnie Gordon (Halftone photos and dictionary definitions)
-Forcibly combining text/ selecting from text to alter
-Borrowed and original material
-Preexisting and recreation
-Digital and handmade

The publications will be out in two weeks after Thanksgiving break. They will be scattered around the school and surrounding areas. If you submit work and cannot find a copy, please e-mail me and I’ll make sure you get one.

-Cait Stephens.

Prompt Writing--Intangible

Hey guys, sorry for this belated entry on our collective prompt writing. Coming from outside the country, I think I'm more than lucky to get participated in all the inspirational activities so far . It's a lot of fun to see the infiniteness of possibilities when our imagination are ignited by our peers in the writing relay race( if the term is legible).

Ok I'll save my wordiness for the next meeting. Below is the story contrived by the six of us:

Intangible

I want to capture air in photographs. I want to sew laughter to my skirt. I want to bring the scent of my flowers in my pocket.

Being able to touch me doesn’t mean we are close.I sometimes think that it would be easier to let go of such memories of you and I, sitting at the ends of the world.Cyberspace draws us nearer, but really, the closer we are, the less we touch.

Thoughts known without a connection to the sensory.A black rod running through a building, passing floors, going unseen;A fish swimming across a coast, going uncaught;a person chugging whisky, without getting drunk.This is intangible.

Oh,my,good,will,march,why,wha,koo,noh,bleesnzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Wading through a pond of watercrest infused jello,I feel worried.

1,about my skin

1,about my wife

1,about my world,wobbling off it’s axis. Back into the womb from where is wondered, what if…

I drift away from the conscious realm to question;to question where I came from, who am I?why am I here?

Feel free to correct me if there are any grammertical errors.

---ziyuan

A Little Writing Exercise

Not last Thursday but the one before, we all sat down and went "Hmmm. What shall we do today?" I do so love a bit of indecision! For we arrived at the obvious conclusion to get writing!

Following a strict schedule, we decided to put some limits to our writing:
1. Each person decides and writes out their topic, ranging from "Intangible" to "The Sea" to "Office Space".
2. For 2 minutes, everyone writes about the topic in front of them.
3. After 2 minutes, we pass our paper once to the person on our left.
4. Repeat step 2-3 until everyone has written on all the topics.

Thus, the result for "Office Space" is posted below:

[Office Space]

Cara was bored. Bored enough to pretend that she was working diligently, when in fact she was counting the number of pixels it took to make up the word 'dot'.

Funnier than expected. The absolute boon of a square mind. It is a cubist paradise. The most organic of shapes found in this space might be a stapler. A stapler is a point of laughter in the Office Space.

"Hey dear, let's just watch this movie," he said.
"I don't feel like it tonight," she said.
"Common, just get on the couch with me, lean against my arm, I'm sure once it starts, you'll get into it."

10,000 thumbtacks in the wall, nay, cubicle, or particle board, after the economy rupture. Those little pins close in to squish me, inching minute amounts closer as the clock ticks backwards. F*** it, I quit, and I s*** you not I'm stealing the red stapler.

And I stare.
And I stare again.
And I stare again and again, only to discover pixels blurring before my eyes.

It must be for the pins.

If you have one to share, please blog as well!!

Flyer

Hey I found that little piece of paper with the sign-in stuff. I made flyers with submission information, I hope you guys like them. I'm printing them tomorrow, so expect to see them around.

*Jeypeg@yahoo.com

See everybody on thursday, I think. Though actually I have a thing so I might not be able to come, I just remembered. Well I hope you like this.

-Ian

Mark Booth: A Review of a Review

This is a tad late, but better late than never!

On the 6th of October, there was something special going on in room 1307B - Mark Booth's penultimate review. As some of you may know, Mark is one of many awesome faculty members of the Writing department, and deals mostly in writing, sound and painting. As a requirement to qualify for tenure, Mark put a show together as a review of his work.

In general, I was a little surprised that he didn't discuss any of his sound pieces, but I got to see a different side to his work - mainly, his paintings and installations. Many pieces were an interesting fusion of text and abstracted images that evoked more of a feeling than represented anything, but the carefully handwritten text was what interested me most. As a student in the writing department, I've always struggled to know exactly what to put on any text art project, but Mark here seems to pull it off without a sweat: for example, one of his pieces read "One day I went to bed with a witch. The next morning, I could only remember 25 of 26 letters of the alphabet" [exact wording may be slightly different - I'm writing from memory]. There is something personal but distancing about his work, which is not quite ethereal due to the concrete words and language he uses, yet not quite of this world due to the soft colours he uses for painting the background.

Mark also explores the interaction between humans and spaces - an avid fan of George Perec's Of Species and Spaces and Other Pieces, Mark has taken this concept of "What is space?" and made it his own in a gallery installation, cutting out words from museum vinyl and weaving a story on the walls. He also showed us pictures of an installation/performance piece he did in a church, which had him lying on the ground amongst seeds. An environmental streak, perhaps?

In any case, if SAIC doesn't grant him his tenure, I'll...write a letter of complaint! I'll have you know that I can be very persuasive on paper.

Hm. Perhaps this is more of a shoutout than a review. Ah well.

- Nicola