Dark Angels in Conversation December 2016

{ to read Sherman Alexie’s Sonnet, with bird, scroll to the bottom. }

Gillian to Lucy

It was wonderful to spend those few days with you at Loughcrew. Tell me, did you have any expectations of what you wanted to get out of the course?

Lucy to Gillian

Ah, Gillian, they were magical days! It was fantastic to meet you, John and Mike — three of the Dark Angel magicians — and my fellow white rabbits, Mike, Fiona, Emily, Olive and Megan.

My expectations?….I tried not to have any expectations at all. I often imagine myself forwards into all sorts of situations and then get disappointed when what I’ve convinced myself will happen doesn’t (I obviously haven’t mastered the technique of visualisation, ahem). So, this time, I made a conscious effort not to anticipate what I would get out of it. It would be a step into the unknown.

Having said that, I did get rid of a concern early on — that ‘it was a course for people writing for business’. How would that be relevant to me, when here I was, turning my back on 20 years of writing for organisations, and wanting to dig deeper into my own fictional writing, poetry etc? I was really lucky to speak to you about the course well in advance,and of course was inspired by Thérèse Kieran, who writes poetry and has done the Foundation and Advanced courses. She assured me that the course was as relevant to me as it was to two marketing consultants, a strategy director, start-up business leader and mobile app developer (my fellow white rabbits).

Gillian to Lucy

You’re right. Dark Angels is like a lighthouse to many kinds of writers. Perhaps that’s part of its magic, not knowing how the mix of experience, exercises and sensibilities will work together. I was particularly interested in your thoughts since I know you’ve participated in different kinds of creative writing workshops and courses. How did the Intensive Foundation course compare with those?

Lucy to Gillian

The immersiveness of the Foundation course sets it apart from other courses I’ve done. You created a ‘bubble’ for us — a beautiful location, we didn’t have to think about any practicalities — food and drink were all provided (copiously) — and you rolled us on from one writing exercise to the next. We didn’t have space to hesitate so I kept leaping in; there wasn’t time for me to let those gremlins jump into my mind and undermine what I was doing so I kept going. I thought the course was beautifully planned.

Also you ‘magicians’ didn’t critique our work at all. That was another difference. The writing courses I’ve done — weekly classes, one-off workshops and a weekend workshop — have had an expectation of the tutor judging participants’ work, to varying degrees. You, John and Mike were very supportive but you weren’t there to tell us if our writing was good or bad. Instead, it seemed that by managing the different experience and sensibilities of the participants, you created a space — a laboratory perhaps — in which we could each experiment and test and pull and stretch our own styles of writing, see where it took us.

Gillian to Lucy

Your analogy of experimenting in the laboratory feels like an accurate one. I’m glad you felt that Dark Angels provided a safe space to go and explore aspects of your writing without fear of judgment.

I always think that a testament to any kind of creative immersion is if it inspires us to write more freely. Have you managed to find time to write anything since you have returned?

Lucy to Gillian

Yes! And the freedom I’ve found has come from the constraints I learned on the course. Particularly summarising what I’m trying to write in 12 words. That really helps me get to the nub of the pieces I’ve written since. Oh and I’ve just completed a prose sonnet (inspired by yours) that I’m submitting to a competition. So yes, definitely writing. Thank you.

Ed. note: Lucy’s prose sonnet, inspired by Gillian’s prose sonnet, was inspired by Jamie Jauncey’s prose sonnet, which was inspired by Richard Pelletier’s prose sonnet, which was inspired by Sherman Alexie’s utterly amazing prose sonnet. It’s called Sonnet, with Bird. Here it is:

Sonnet, with Bird

by Sherman Alexie

1. Seventeen months after I moved off the reservation, and on the second plane ride of my life, I traveled to London to promote my first internationally published book. 2. A Native American in England! I imagined the last Indian in England was Maria Tall Chief, the Osage ballerina who was once married to Balanchine. An Indian married to Balanchine! 3. My publishers put me in a quaint little hotel near the Tate Gallery. I didn’t go into the Tate. Back then I was afraid of paintings of and by white men. I think I’m still afraid of paintings of and by white men. 4. This was long before I had a cell phone, so I stopped at pay phones to call my wife. I miss the intensity of a conversation measured by a dwindling stack of quarters. 5. No quarters in England, though and I don’t remember what the equivalent British coin was called. 6. As with every other country I’ve visited, nobody thought I was Indian. This made me lonely. 7. Lonely enough to cry in my hotel bed one night as I kept thinking, “I am the only Indian in this country right now. I’m the only Indian within a five-thousand-mile circle.” 8. But I wasn’t the only Indian; I wasn’t even the only Spokane Indian. 9. On the payphone, my mother told me that a childhood friend from the reservation was working at a London pub. So I wrote down the address and took a taxi driven by one of those cabdrivers with extrasensory memory. 10. When I entered the pub, I sat in a corner and waited for my friend to discover me. When he saw me he leapt over the bar and hugged me. “I thought I was the only Indian in England,” he said. 11. His name was Aaron and he died last spring. I’d rushed to see him in his last moments, but he passed before I could reach him. Only minutes gone, his skin was still warm. I held his hand, kissed his forehead, and said, “England.” 12. “England” in our tribal language, now means, “Aren’t we a miracle?” and “Goodbye.” 13. In my strange little hotel near the Tate, I had to wear my suit coat to eat breakfast in the lobby restaurant. Every morning I ordered eggs and toast. Everywhere in the world, bread is bread, but my eggs were impossibly small. “What bird is this?” I asked the waiter. “That would be quail,” he said. On the first morning, I could not eat the quail eggs. On the second morning, I only took a taste. On the third day, I ate two and ordered two more. 14. A gathering of quail is called a bevy. A gathering of Indians is called a tribe. When quails speak, they call it a song. When Indians sing, the air is heavy with grief. When quails grieve, they lie down next to their dead. When Indians die, the quail speaks.