Accessing
the Inner Self Through Creative Writing
By Lily Samuels ’11
Students:
forget about MLA citation, present-tense narration, and subject-verb
agreement. It’s time to start writing for fun again.
 On Saturday,
April 9, the Poetry Center and the Office of Religious Life
will co-host a creative writing workshop for Smith students
looking to explore their artistic side and enjoy a nonjudgmental
setting, devoid of pressures common to academic writing.
“We will be looking only at the positive aspects of what we and others write,” describes
author Peggy Gillespie ’69, who will lead the workshop, “learning to pay close
attention to other people's writings, as that teaches us so much about our own.”
The workshop will be held at
the Poetry Center, Wright Hall, from 2 to 5 p.m. Pre-registration——is required; space is limited.
The
workshop is the second in a series—the first took place in
February. Spearheaded by Hayat Abuza,
the Interfaith Program Coordinator in the Office of Religious
Life, the collaborative workshops are intended to help foster “mindfulness” and
promote the development of the capacity for self-reflection
in participants.
“In our writing workshop, it is the cultivation of curiosity and looking closely
and reflectively that brings a person closer to knowing herself,” Abuza
says. “This
can create a skill for life.”
Peggy Gillespie ’69 |
A popular word that often eludes
definition, “’mindfulness’ simply
means paying attention in the present and allowing whatever
is there to be seen and experienced fully,” Gillespie explains. “By
applying that meditative clarity and openness to writing,
it is simply an atmosphere of allowing writing to come to
the surface without the harmful effects of the inner critic
censoring our creativity.”
Mindfulness is the central theme
of programs in the Wellness Initiative, also coordinated
by Abuza, as well as a yearlong mindful living series for
students coordinated by Emily Nagoski, director of wellness
education.
Rachel Besserman, a graduate
student at Smith who participated in the February writing
workshop, describes it as “…thoughtful, contemplative and
resourceful. Intimate, real and raw! We wrote outside in
a picnic circle of depth and creativity.”
The high stress levels and copious
amounts of academic writing that Smith students face each
semester can impede the free-flowing, expressive writing
that Gillespie and Abuza believe to be crucial to self-discovery
and reflection. These workshops are designed to help mitigate
some of those effects.
“In a college that has so much academic pressure, and where most writing is
in the academic mode, this is a time to go back to the roots of writing without
fear of being judged harshly, without grades, without a sense
of pressure,” says
Gillespie. “Hopefully, the workshops will lead students to
take some time out of their busy schedules to write in this
same way, whether journaling, nonfiction, fiction, or poetry.” |
