A WORKSHOP ON WRITING MEMOIR
Writing is a way of getting to know who you are,
what you are feeling and how you relate to people and the planet. Writing
memoir focuses this project on the themes or motifs in one’s own life. We each
have a life motif that is more or less unconscious. Yet a distinctive and
evolving pattern binds our journey from birth to death into a whole coherent
piece.
Imagination is an extraordinary tool. In this
workshop we will reclaim imagination as a means to release ourselves into awe
and creativity, connectedness and purpose, awareness and pleasure. Through
becoming conscious of and engaging with the images that shape our time on earth,
we will discover ways to live more creatively, as well as finding refreshing approaches
to put our personal stories down on the page.
Beginner writers are welcome.
Venue: The
Forge, Windsor Rd, Kalk Bay
Fee: R1400
Dates: Thursday
13th to Sunday 16th September 2012
Times : 9am to 2pm daily
A deposit of
R400 secures your place.
References:
“I found Dawn Garisch’s
memoir-writing course extremely useful and helpful: she provided a structure
that held all of us would-be memoirists firmly to our task, while at the same
time helping us to get in touch with our senses, our fears, our dreams, our
stories. The image that comes to mind is of holding tight to the golden thread
that will allow us to go down to the depths and emerge again, unscathed though
not unchanged. The sense of community and support that is born of twenty-odd
people meeting daily for four days to address themselves to such a deeply
individual task was also one of the unexpected pleasures of the experience. I
would heartily recommend this course.”
-
Athalie Crawford
“This course helped me to break through the
block created by my own diffidence and reluctance, enabling me to find and
become confident in the thread I must pursue in order to be true to myself.
Dawn created an atmosphere of trust in which the participants felt free to go
as far as they wished on this journey into memory and onto the page. The
structure of the course was well thought out and effective, both day by day and
as a whole. An unusual, highly effective and striking aspect of Dawn’s
facilitative work is her insistence that writing, memory and creativity are not
simply to be found in the ‘head’, but are lodged in and distributed through the
‘memory’ to be discovered in the body itself. The course was enlightening,
stimulating, moving and fun.”
-
John Cartwright
"Dawn's
memoir writing workshop was a finely crafted and facilitated process that
encouraged and enabled us to write. My creativity was stimulated by her use of
poetry and prose, her listening and sensing exercises, her considerable
knowledge and experience of the act of writing, and her easy manner when
it came to holding and guiding the group and the process. In short: an
excellent and productive experience!"
- Judy Bekker
“The evaluations from your students indicate
that many felt they benefitted greatly from your facilitation and encouragement
to draw on their own inner resources to spark their writing, and that through
this they gained knowledge about themselves and insights that were highly
enriching to the writing process. They were given some methodology and tools
and felt supported and enabled to be self-reliant in their work. Although this
made others used to a more didactic approach insecure at first, they adapted to
it and acknowledged its value.”
-
Feedback from UCT Summer School 2012
Short Biography
Dawn
Garisch has had five novels and a collection of poetry published, a short play
and short film produced, and has written for television, magazines and
newspapers. Three of her novels have been published in the UK. In 2010 Trespass was short-listed for the
Commonwealth prize in Africa, and in 2011 her poem Miracle won the EU Sol Plaatjie Poetry Award. A non-fiction work Eloquent Body was published by Modjaji
in March. She runs workshops on writing and creative method, is a practising
medical doctor and lives in Cape Town.
