First Year Writing published on Zeitgeist Spam
Creative Writing students studying on our 'Writing as a Reader' first year module have had their work published on the blog Zeitgeist Spam, which is run by American author and editor John Bloomberg-Rissman.
Bloomberg-Rissman previously edited an anthology 1000 Views of Girl, Singing (Leafe Press) which began as a project on his blog. The starting point was the poem 'The Secret Life of an Angel' by Eileen Tabios, itself a response to the poem 'Girl Singing' by Filipino Poet José Garcia Villa. Bloomberg-Rissman used various transformational procedures to produce versions of Tabios's poem, or new poems based upon it.
The project was then opened to contributors, and the outpouring of creative, experimental work that followed is on show in the anthology – visual and musical versions, translations, along with the results of processes and transformations.
“So, for the next while you will be privy to the work of some young up-and-coming writers, as I post their poems. Enjoy! And, I should add, that it’s a privilege to be part of their education, or torture, or however the students feel about this assignment. As for how I think they should feel about it, given the results, every last one of them should be very proud.”
After Senior Lecturer Rupert Loydell, who had previously contributed to the project, got in touch with Bloomberg-Rissman, 1000 Views has come back to life. 'Writing as a Reader' considers writing about, back to, from and responding to texts of all kinds (including written, spoken, the visual, aural, as well as poetry, fiction and non-fiction) including reversionary writing, collage, reviewing, adaptation, pastiche and parody, using texts as source material (literally and thematically), creative responses, as well as critical responses.
It also considers genre, information content, point of view, tone and literary context. In week 4 of the module, students wrote their own responses or versions to the Tabios poem, as well as working in small groups to create episodes in the life of Michael Moorcock's open-source character Jerry Cornelius.