Gods and monsters are notably absent from the first of two new films based on Homer’s Odyssey, which focuses on the end of the poem as Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca to find Penelope besieged by suitors. Out in the UK today (it was released in the US at the end of 2024) Uberto Pasolini’s The Return reunites Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche for the first time since the multi-Academy Award winning dramatisation of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, and it’s hard to avoid reviews and comment in print, online and broadcast media. Here is a link to Peter Bradshaw’s Guardian review (which includes a brief trailer for the film).
Meanwhile, preparations are afoot for the 2026 release of Christopher Nolan’s “action fantasy” interpretation of the epic, apparently described by Universal Pictures’ US head of distribution as “a visionary, once-in-a-generation cinematic masterpiece that Homer himself would quite likely be proud of.” Aside from the Trump-style hyperbole, The Odyssey does seem to be having a moment more than two-and-a-half thousand years after it was first written, so we are taking the opportunity to remind the Salon community (and friends and family) that there are still two places available on our week-long study on the Greek island of Agistri. It will be an amazing trip, email us if you would like to know more!
Our annual Salon trip to the sun-drenched island of Agistri to study classical literature is always one of the year’s greatest highlights. Each day we wake to a different sunrise. We dip in the sparkling sea, embrace Jane’s heart-led yoga and savour the deliciously fresh and healthy food offered by Rosy’s village. Above all we relish the utter luxury of entering an enduring literary world with a group of bold fellow voyagers, for a week during which our reading is further expanded by Caroline’s illuminating poetic responses and Jane’s skill in realising dramatic possibilities.
What is different for me this year is the clanging backdrop of global politics, louder than ever, and in particular the destruction of democracy in the United States. Our study of Homer’s Odyssey always reveals profound insights into the world we find ourselves in today: Oxen of the Sun gestures to the degradation of environmental balance, the encounter in Circe can be understood in terms of gender power dynamics seeking resolution, while the absolute struggle of Odysseus to survive and find his way home – not just for his own sake but for the men he leads – will open up our discussion about leadership. What makes a true leader? What does a leader owe those who follow? How does a group respond when leadership can no longer be trusted? Homer strips events back to their bare bones – in the Homeric world there is no interior narration, all happens on the surface and in the moment.
The other predominant consideration in the Odyssey, and for us in the present day, is that of xenia – the relationship between guest and host. How do we treat the stranger arriving on our shore? How do we want to be treated when we are that stranger? What does this say about our culture, our home, our values? Homer makes us aware of how central this relationship has been to our humanity from the very earliest times of recorded history.
In past years this rare escape into literature has provided context and perspective for the challenges of the modern world. It has given me renewed strength to oppose inequality and to encourage open and inclusive teaching practice for all. I come away from our Salon study experiences heartened by the many beautiful minds I have been privileged to encounter through shared exploration of these complex texts.
This year, I know it will not be easy to escape the horrors of the world, I will carry my worries with me. I have people in my community who are directly impacted by the destruction in the USA – I know people who have already lost their jobs and others who fear losing them, I know authors whose books have been banned, I know people in humanitarian aid around the world whose work is threatened daily – and I also know that this is just the beginning of direct, negative impact on the lives of so many. And yet, nearly three thousand years after it was first written, Homer’s Odyssey reminds me that with courage and persistence it is possible – eventually – to overcome adversity and return to rebuild one’s home and community.
We still have a few places available on our Odyssey study. If you are interested in the idea of sharing this experience with a group of keen and humane fellow readers and would like to know more, you are very welcome to email us.
Portrait of William Faulkner by Carl Van Vechten, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
“. . . the twilight-coloured smell of honeysuckle . . .”
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Why read Faulkner today? A difficult, old, white, long-dead male writer – one who lied about his military experience, whose mind was ravaged by drink and disappointment – who was also a Nobel laureate, a dreamer, a lover of beauty, a seeker of what shimmers in human relationships and who believed, against the violence and prejudice surrounding him, that human beings can strive for meaning and truth.
Faulkner peeled back the skin of his life and allowed his art to feed on his exposed self. While it is true that at times he reflects the racial and gender prejudices of his time and cultural space, it is equally true that from the same space he also interrogates racism, misogyny and inequity through his own experience. His writing – sultry, tragic, comic and deeply philosophical – brings the reader utterly into his world and its agonies. But in the midst of the howling and rage, there is always the energy of seeking hope – whether it be in the form of a young woman who escapes her terrible inheritance, the endurance of the statuesque Dilsey, or the howling of the final inheritor of Sutpen’s magnificent dream – we see the human spirit fighting for integrity.
Now – right now – I feel the need to find means to resist external forces that feel overwhelming. I am talking about political corruption, environmental degradation, disasters of fire and war, wilful ignorance, xenophobic power structures, and feelings of helplessness in the face of these monstrosities. Faulkner and other writers I revere help me to not turn away, reminding me that even in a cataclysm, a single act of bravery or resistance matters. Language – words, rhythms, lyric content, jagged images – can give me a model for living within an indigestible world.
William Faulkner’s Address Accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature
As originally delivered 10 December, 1950 in Stockholm, Sweden
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear, so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man, young woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he lives under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he releases – relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will still endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.
Top of many ‘best novel’ lists, Ulysses also heads countless lists of great novels abandoned or never read – even by accomplished readers and writers. What is it about this huge book that makes it so daunting, so hard, and so valuable? Why read it at all?
The book offers an ever-widening perspective. From an intimate view of one relatively unremarkable man’s walk around Dublin on a summer’s day, the linguistic journey ripples outward to encompass a dazzling range of quirky local characters, visions of the Far East, critiques of Empire, references to Irish politics, ancient and modern philosophical theories, gender dynamics, operas, innards, sexual hallucinations, cross-dressing, dogs (alive and dead), cats, the history of food, lemon soap that sings, a treatise on water, death rituals and the decomposition of the human body, pornographic books, Shakespearean theories . . . Ulysses is packed with rich intellectual enquiry, the compelling rhythms of a hungry mind exploring the wonders of the world.
Then there is the writing itself. To grapple with the words and linguistic pyrotechnics of James Joyce – to enter into his exploration of the body, mind and street-life, to sit in awe of his allusions, musicality, interweaving structures and thematic developments – is to expand the possibilities of the written word. To do this with a diverse group of other curious readers who are sharing the struggle and process of discovery allows each participant to enrich their own understanding many times over. Together we laugh, we express our frustrations, we query meaning and purpose, and we discover great depth in the language and vision of an extraordinary writer.
Our next Ulysses studies – two options: 11.30 am – 1.30 pm or 5.30 – 7.30 pm (UK time) – begin on Tuesday 21 January. If you are tempted to sign up we have a very few places remaining and you are welcome to join the first meeting without charge or obligation to continue. Please email litsalon@gmail.com using the subject line ‘Ulysses 2025’ if you would like to try a session before you buy!
Photo by Nikki Fraunhofer shows architectural detail from St Stephen Walbrook church, London EC4
Merricat, Constance and Uncle Julian Blackwood live in a grand, eccentric house which they call the Castle. The rambling mansion itself forms a powerful character within the novel and sits on the edge of an unnamed American village. Within the Blackwood wire fence, eighteen-year-old Merricat roves the estate, burying magical charms to conjure an illusion of safety. Twice a week however, she must venture out into a world of petty, spiteful villagers. They stare and whisper, whilst local children hound Merricat, chanting a mocking rhyme about her older sister.
When Jackson introduces us to the Castle any ordinary writer would buckle under the weight of laboured tropes about mayhem, magic and madness. Yet from the start, Jackson’s spare, taut prose signals this is no mere work of folkloric, gothic froth. Her narrative is pierced by acute observations about the kinds of small-town prejudices which leave the Blackwoods marginalised and marooned at the edge of their community. She weaves a sardonic thread of social commentary throughout the story, but her genius lies in one skill above all others: the way she touches, oh so lightly, on the fact that one of the sisters is a poisoner.
Constance was once tried and acquitted for poisoning her family, but years later she remains imprisoned by choice, never leaving the grounds of the Blackwood home. Defined by a world which prizes a clean house and well-cooked food as the paradigm of feminine virtue, Constance produces a stream of jewel-like preserves with an almost magical ease. As readers, we are left to wonder why nearly everyone in the Blackwood family died after sharing the meal which she cooked. Merricat, our narrator seems to neither know nor care, but when Cousin Charles arrives hoping to charm Constance and her fortune away with him, the question gains new urgency.
Jackson’s book is rich with astute perceptions about the murky depths below our paper-thin layers of civilisation. Her novella defies classification, fitting none of the conventional murder-mystery, feminist polemic, or teenage ‘coming of age’ categories. Whilst Castle has resonances with Jackson’s short-story The Lottery, here Jackson fleshes out the end results of community-enforced rules of ‘normality’ and their effects on social order. Set in 1950s America, the novella provides a savage commentary on the Cold War paranoia, as well as rigidly enforced, gender-specific expectations of the times. It is a tale of many kinds of poisoning and yet the book is also strangely funny. Were Jackson alive today, one has to wonder whether her intelligent, incisive humour would be published. Could it be that our contemporary ‘norms of civilisation’ are now too poisonous to be funny?
Just over one hundred years ago a group of artists, writers and intellectuals changed how we think of a special corner of Sussex – and a lot else besides. Here, beneath the South Downs and between the Ouse and Cuckmere valleys, is Bloomsbury’s country heartland. The Bloomsbury Group, as they became known for their London base, adopted this part of Sussex as their place of escape, to live their own lives in the way they wanted – independence, sexual freedom and a rural existence.
Salonista and Woolf devotee Sharon Bylenga
For our forthcoming study of Virginia Woolf’s novel Night and Day we will be staying at Wingrove House, in the high street of Alfriston, East Sussex, a 19th century colonial-style country house hotel, with roaring log fires and rustic-chic rooms, located just a few miles from Charleston House on the banks of the Cuckmere River. Here we will be perfectly located for exploring Alfriston and the South Downs that Woolf and her family and friends loved so dearly (the photos above were taken on a recent research visit so I write from experience). We will use the Lodge at Wingrove House for our meetings – a perfect Salon environment complete with fireplace! – and I’m thrilled that my fellow facilitator Karina Jakubowicz will be joining us.
These long weekends away give us the opportunity to stretch into a book; finding together a rich weave of insights, ideas and connections between the text and our contemporary experience. As one of Virginia Woolf’s lesser-known works, Night and Day (1919) is a bridge between traditional fictional forms and her more radical explorations. The characters in Night and Day probe and push against social conventions, but ultimately both text and the characters remain confined within the social expectations of Edwardian England.
However, both on the surface and just submerged, there is another register of questioning and resistance. There is an opening out towards wider spaces, there is a pushing against the weight of the past. While the book offers us a variety of romantic situations that are not typical Woolfian fare, these relationships show fractures in the gendered spaces of the time. I find the tension that the book barely contains, the daydreams that threaten to overtake the social performances; give a vision towards the possibilities that Woolf would later expand into. It is an absorbing link in the ever fascinating chain of Woolf’s work.
Angelus Novus by Paul Klee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
When I thought about an image to illustrate Philosophy & Literature, Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus immediately came to mind. Benjamin, the German Jewish philosopher, was a literary critic known for his work on Proust, Baudelaire, Goethe, Kafka, theatre, storytelling, libraries and more. I felt that a salon reflecting on ‘text’ should somehow pay homage to this great critic who was interested in the truth found not just in books but in objects, advertisements, technology, arcades . . . A monoprint of Klee’s Angel was one of Benjamin’s most cherished possessions and was found among his sparse belongings when he committed suicide in 1940, at the French/Spanish border he needed to cross to escape Nazism in France and which had just closed.
For Benjamin, the Angelus Novus is the Angel of History. “His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet”. The pile of debris only grows higher as a storm pushes him backwards towards the future. This storm, says Benjamin “is what we call progress”, I wanted the Klee image to “quote” Benjamin, to remind us of his dedicated search for truth in all forms – from the smallest object to the most scholarly treatise. Unfortunately, with the horrendous attack on Israel by Hamas and the suffering of the Palestinian people, the Klee image brings back to our minds the despair suffered before, the pile of debris, the wreckage of human folly that we call progress and which surrounds us at this moment.
The philosophical work of Benjamin is inspiring and his search for truth in all objects and texts is worth pursuing. We are keen readers who, like Benjamin, love stories and books, and we ponder over them. Is Ulysses telling the ‘truth’ when he recounts his adventures to the Phaeacian king? Is Ishmael telling the truth when he weaves a story about Moby Dick to some Spanish gentlemen in Lima? What is the ‘truth’ of these narratives? Who is Mrs Dalloway? Who is the ‘real’ Clarissa? Reading Proust’s Search, we wonder, who is telling the story? What is that story about? Is there only one way of reading a text? What is a ‘text’? Who speaks what, to whom and with what effect? Can we speak of truth, reality or knowledge when we read? Can we speak of pleasure?
These questions do not have straight answers but, as a philosopher by training, I think they deserve a space of their own. Not that I believe philosophy can resolve them: nowadays we have become suspicious of the idea of a ‘foundation’ of knowledge. Indeed, often we believe that philosophy is just one possible narrative among others. Still, as philosophy has traditionally addressed many of these questions, it will be interesting to see if, by reading excerpts of some well-known philosophical texts we can enrich our discussion.
Participants joining the Philosophy & Literature salon do not need to have had any previous acquaintance with philosophical texts. As readers who enjoy reading and discussing texts using our own experiences, we are ready to start. I will provide notes with background information on the authors, concepts and ideas, as well as some further reading for those who want to pursue those ideas. In the sessions we will be reading the texts and discussing how they present ideas of reality, truth, art and experience, seeking to integrate these ideas with our own understanding of books we have read and our own lived experience. Contributions from participants from all areas of knowledge will be very welcome. ‘Text’ as Barthes suggests, encompasses more than just the written word.
We will start with Aristotle, who defined the art of ‘poetics’ as ‘imitation’: copying, representing reality. We will try to see how those ideas influenced the way we understand language, knowledge and art. From there we will move to Nietzsche, a big leap no doubt, but one that opens the space for modernist – and postmodern – literature. Wittgenstein will bring to the fore the horizon of shared practices, values and customs that surround language, writing, speaking and reading. Finally, we will ‘visit’ Paris and possibly find ‘pleasure’ amidst the multi-layered texts of Barthes, who in many ways and forms reminds us, once again, of Benjamin.
Philosophy & Literature, a four week study, begins on 25 January 2024. I invite you to join the journey.
Marilynne Robinson — winner of the Pulitzer Prize (2005), PEN/ Hemingway Award (1982), Women’s Prize for Fiction (2009), National Book Critics Circle Award (2015, 2004) among many others — is considered one of the world’s greatest living novelists. She was Barack Obama’s choice for philosophical discussions to help him in his Presidency of the USA, and she has been cited as an inspiration by many recent writers of fiction and non-fiction. Even so, I am surprised to find very well-read people who have not heard of her or who have never read her.
For me, reading Robinson’s novels is like being immersed in a mountain stream after an arduous, sweaty hike. She goes directly into what is tormented and messy in the human heart and, through her crystalline prose, finds what glows there. Robinson is drawn to the places of paradox in the human psyche. For example, in the Gilead Quartet one of her questions is how a community, historically defined by a fierce commitment to the Abolitionist movement, might evolve in a later generation to disregard the racism at the core of the American project (and therefore at the heart of apparently ethical small-town, Protestant America).
Robinson’s theology is an essential part of her vision. While this may put some readers off, what Robinson does with her faith is to employ it in her muscular inquiry of human behaviour. How is it, for example, that some of those who are most committed to a monotheistic code of a life of good values, end up becoming rigid and dangerously dogmatic in their views? How is it that the Christian values of charity and grace seem to grow into prejudice and harsh judgements of neighbours?
A recent Salon discussion around Home (published 2008) became one of the most respectful and rich interfaith exchanges I have had the privilege to experience: the group comprised practitioners of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, an Anglican priest, a few raised in the Catholic church, an atheist, several agnostics and a few who follow Buddhist principles. Because Robinson creates a community of faith that she then uses to consider how faith may be used – or misused – in translating values into living, we as a group found material that helped us consider how our various theological imprints shaped our view of the world, specifically in the realms of forgiveness, salvation and grace. As Nicky Von Fraunhofer, co-facilitator for the Robinson studies commented: “Jack’s position in the family is the provoker of questions about the family’s faith and attitudes, especially over the theology of guilt and sin. This plays very directly into the story of the Prodigal, but Marilynne extends it here, to what happens after the son comes home.”
A recent piece in the New Yorker gives a precise reading of what Robinson offers, particularly in reflection of the tormented story of American history:
Her nonfiction had taken on the thunderous tones of a prophet, but in her fiction she found the range of the psalmist, sometimes gentle, sometimes wild, and always full of empathy and wonder. “I have a bicameral mind,” she says, explaining that her lectures and essays are a way of “aerating” ideas that often originate in agitation or outrage, whereas the novels are a different exercise entirely. The essays are the most explicit expression of her ideas, the novels the most elegant. “With any piece of fiction, any work of literature, the assumption is that a human life matters,” Robinson says. For her, this is a theological commitment, a reflection of her belief in the Imago Dei: the value of each of us, inclusive of our faults. “That is why I love my characters. I can only write about characters I love.”
Casey Cep, The New Yorker
Robinson’s vision, as expressed in her fiction, honours the immediacy of life; rendering the details of sensation and thought with a lyric and respectful attention. Her view is intimate and direct to the quiet inner lives of her characters, but from that personal space, she takes in huge questions – around faith, family, homelessness, hypocrisy, grief, identity, ecology – engaged with the natural world, but always in respectful and exploratory mode that invites the reader in.
There are passages in her fiction that I just relish (I have been known to pull out her book in the midst of a dinner party and subject the guests to a reading):
“For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing — the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.”
Marilynne Robinson
Robinson’s work generates energetic, even passionate discussions as the exploration in her fiction goes deeply into the contradictions of contemporary existence and the history we have inherited. Housekeeping, her first novel, asks us to consider how a model of parenting that is – quite literally – outside the social spaces might be right and appropriate for a grieving young woman.
In the coming months, we have several Marilynne Robinson texts on offer — coming soon, her first work Housekeeping — you are warmly invited to join our own exploration.
Nicholas Hilliard miniature, believed to portray Aemilia Lanyer
What comes to mind when you think of English Renaissance poetry? Probably Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare. Perhaps Wyatt and most certainly Donne. We delight in their inventive iambic pentameters, their creative imagery, their musical verse that takes our minds back to a time of courtly intrigue and endless linguistic innovation. We get lost in their clever metaphors, and revel in their elaborate rhetoric.
But what comes to mind when you think about women and the poetry of the English Renaissance? The chances are you might think of the many, many women who appear in the poems by Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, Donne and Shakespeare. And this is where we find a disturbing paradox: while Renaissance women are everywhere on paper, it’s very hard to find them holding a pen. This is the conclusion Virginia Woolf came to in 1928, on speaking to a small group of Cambridge female students at a time when, after long struggles, women were allowed to study at university but still could not obtain a degree. Woolf, ever the storyteller, cast her mind back to the 1600s to imagine what would have happened if Shakespeare had ‘a wonderfully gifted sister’, how would her fictional biography go? As Woolf concluded, it ended badly.
Until very recently, if you wanted to read poetry written by women in Shakespeare’s day you would be in trouble. If you were really determined you might come across English women whose poetry survived largely because they were lucky enough to be in elevated social positions, the likes of Queen Elizabeth I, and Ladies Mary Sidney and Mary Wroth. But what about the common woman? One who could have been Shakespeare’s sister?
In the last decades scholars have started scouring archives and libraries in search of women writers of the English Renaissance, and they’ve made surprising discoveries. Despite not being born in courtly circles and being mostly denied any education or professional path, some English women managed to write (and occasionally even publish) impressive poetry in the 16th and 17th centuries. So, who were they? And was their poetry any good?
I’m excited to be leading the LitSalon study Women poets of the English Renaissance, whichinvites readers to explore this previously silent canon and begin to form an opinion. Together we will let these poems live again by revisiting their dormant sounds, rhymes and imagery. The study focuses on three groundbreaking poets and their work: Anne Locke’s fiercely devotional poetry; Isabella Whitney’s mock ‘last will’ bequeathing London to Londoners; and the feminist poetry of Aemilia Lanyer, who came from an Italian-Jewish family of courtly musicians and is rumoured to have been Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’.
Together we will try to build a picture of these poets and their lives in the Renaissance world. And we will look to pair up their poetry with artefacts from that world, enabling the words and objects to converse across time. We will ask the compelling question: how does this poetry speak to us today?
At the LitSalon’s Reading the Body retreat in Umbria earlier this month, I was reminded how intimidating creative writing can be for many people — even the most intelligent, eloquent and accomplished.
As fifteen of us gathered and got acquainted in front of the villa, with its many varieties of trees and birdsong, I knew there’d be no shortage of inspiration for our writing together. Not to mention the literary discussions and daily yoga practice. Yes, we’d be not only reading the body but writing it too.
A few people pulled me aside to say that they would not be joining the writing workshop. More than a few were hesitant: it wasn’t their thing; they’d been scarred at school; they weren’t creative enough; it’s intimidating . . . But, like Mary Oliver says, ‘it doesn’t have to be.’
The way we write together in these workshops is more about noticing, connecting, and playing with words. Because I gently direct the writing, participants can be released from pressure and be spontaneous and intuitive — the opposite of the kind of writing we did in school. There’s no concern for grammar, spelling, punctuation, ‘You don’t even have to use words — you can doodle if you want,’ I say. We’re not concerned at all with perfection. It’s precisely the imperfection of spontaneity that’s at the heart of this playful writing, and I reckon that’s why it feels so good.
It feels good because there’s no critique, no judgment, just reflection. It isn’t a contest; it’s listening to our inner voices and knowing that everyone has something to say. Sharing and noticing the process of writing, not the writing itself. Of course, you can read your words if you want to. And sometimes, but not always, there’s a bit of magic in what emerges.
By the third workshop, word had spread like our laughter in the air. Almost everyone had given it a go. We made pantoums (an ancient Malaysian poetic form), sankalpas, metaphors, a collaborative poem . . . As a facilitator I was grateful for the bravery and creativity of all who participated and I like to think it added to their retreat experience. I wrote in my own reflections, ‘the Salon is as full of curious, creative women as the place is full of aromas — herbs, grass, rain. Fruits are ripening. Are we?’
If you feel curious or inspired, why not join me online for the next set of workshops in the ‘Writing Through the Seasons’ series? Summer starts on Tuesday 27 June.
Editor’s note:
Below, hot off the press, are two reviews of Alison’s writing sessions in Umbria.
‘An unexpected bonus for me was Alison’s writing groups. I went with a lot of trepidation, wanting, but not expecting to be able to write anything creative – even though I have wanted to do so for years. I have come back with a notebook full of fragments, embryonic poems, and ideas. We were told to dismiss our inner critic, and thanks to the time limits- (5 minutes to write a poem!) – my ‘busy old fool’ – (a Welsh Methodist superego) – never got a chance to stick his thin nose into the process, or to sniff disapprovingly at my unruly spontaneity.’
‘Alison proposes a writing experience which works just as well for a seasoned writer as it does for a beginner. Her exercises are uniquely tuned to take away inhibitions and provide participants with the confidence they need to express themselves freely. I found the writing that emerged could be as surprising as it was effective. Alison’s natural empathy immediately makes everyone feel comfortable. It’s about harmony; she creates a little circle of concord. She provides the wings we need to fly. And we do!’