Memoir writing course in Cape Town Feb 2013

The next memoir writing course is from February 25th to March 1st 2013, mornings 9am to 1pm. For more information, please email dawn.garisch@gmail.com.

Review from Goodreads

This is not a book easily categorised. A non-fiction book, yes. Part memoir, yes. Part medical observances, yes. Then there is poetry and musing on how we live life - both socially, politically, career-wise and in the family. What I would not call it, is a self-help book. Yet, it may help. But no, the book does not strive to solve all your life's problems. Nor will it. 

Over the course of the year I have had to come to terms that my health problems are not curable. At least two of them are chronic conditions. Chronic - it will not end until I do. What I had to finally say to myself is, 'I will not live in fear.' To stop worrying how bad it will be later. This is very different from living in denial or some fantasy land where all is happy-go-lucky. One needs to do today what one can to ensure the body works as best it can in the future. This means being aware of the condition, the options to manage it and making sure life is - as best one can - lived to cause minimal harm. But one must still live. And one must not sit and stew, creating horrific scenarios playing 'what if.' Practical - fine. But spending too much time worrying that someday I may be unable to write / walk - or whatever - is only going to make living today harder. 

Neither condition is like breaking a bone. There is no perfect manual that says, 'If X happens, do Y.' It is more of guessing game between PT, medicine and making changes in my day-to-day life. Nor does the PT and meds always 'work' the way we thought they would. There is this fine line we all walk, trying to make things better and not worse. Sometimes something looks promising and actually turns out to be a poor choice. Learning as we go, while still trying to live a life. 

Having others in my life respect my new boundaries and being willing to help or work within my boundaries is helpful. 

What does not help is people telling me to 'not give up hoping for a cure.' The cure will be discovered or not regardless if I hope for one. Right now I'm busy figuring out how to open a can or get my groceries loaded into the car. Or how to type out my thoughts. Practical suggestions in these matters ARE helpful (like the person who reminded me that there IS the invention called an electric can opener). Hoping for a cure does not actually DO anything, nor does it make it any more or less likely for a cure to be discovered. 

Nor do I have patience for those who ask me me to be grateful for my current state. I am, however, grateful the author addressed this - especially the load of crap heaped on cancer patients as if their 'negative attitude' CAUSED cancer. 

The author also has a chronic condition. What I took away from her words is a woman trying to learn to live with her body. That her body is also linked to her mind, and the two co-exist together. What happens to one can impact the other - but not necessarily 'cure' each other. There needs to an understanding so one can live - keep mentally sane - while also an acceptance that THIS is the body you live with. There are unknowns. There are question marks hanging over the body's future. How we mentally deal with this unknown - like the unknowns in all aspects of life - will dictate how well a person lives each day. 

This is not an advocacy to plaster smiles / stiff upper lip / deny anything is wrong. In fact, the author is very honest about emotion, including the small sorrow that she felt when her project - this book - was at its conclusion. She brings out the imagery of a dance - the mind and body learning to move out of respect of one another. To be give the self space to morn / grieve - yet also not to wallow. 

Such fine lines. We like things put in sound bites: Be positive! Exercise is healthy! Work hard!
The truth, however, does not fit so neatly into slogans. Which is perhaps why I am rambling rather than describing this book. 

What I do know is this: I read many, many books - more than I even bother to list on goodreads. There are books that I enjoy, but never loan or buy for another because I can not easily pin-point people I know in my life who are a good match for that book. Then there are books that while I read them names of people who also NEED this book keep popping into my head. I have already bought two copies of this book. I easily see myself giving this to three more people. Not loaning - because I visualise them wanting their own to lend to others. I look forward to hearing what bits intrigued others. I am sure there will be many differing responses. As for me - I've got over 30 stickies peeping out from the pages. 

It is that kind of book.

- Tiah Beautement

Dance with Suitcase

Work in progress - A memoir that rests on movement

An aspect of writing that interests me is how to make form and content work together to enhance the piece. When I started this memoir, I intuitively decided against too formal a structure in which to place the narrative. I wished to honour an analogy between a particular approach to writing and to dance. In this second half of life I am more attracted to free movement than in learning formal steps.

The thrust of the book is towards developing an attitude of trusting body signals and symptoms, and trusting error, as means to invite untutored unconscious material to spill over into awareness. It assumes that non-rational physical and artistic processes have immense value, both in anchoring ourselves and in finding a way forward.

Yet the unconscious is hard to follow, difficult to grasp, as we know from our dreams. I sometimes think of the flow of life as an incomprehensible wash over which we must superimpose a grid or raft – something to hold onto to help us make sense of our lives and the world, to prevent us from drowning.

If we hold on too hard, we can mistake the grid for reality itself and we become rigid, unable to sense the enigmatic flux. But without the grid, we flounder and feel lost.

The art, I think, is to develop an ability to both stable oneself using an approximate raft, and a the same time, to be able to see through the mesh – of words, guidelines, rules, interpretations, models, analysis, structure – so as not to lose sight of the immensity of the mystery out of which we exist and live.

In dance - in movement of any kind - we have schools and forms, cultural practices and rituals, taboos and constraints. Underneath this, and within us all, is the flux and wash of life in all its patterns and guises.

I wish for this memoir – run through as it is by the origins and development of my own movement practice – to pay homage to it all.

 HOW WELL DO WE SEE?

Two investigations into problems with vision, both recommended:
Oliver Sacks' The Mind's Eye and Teju Cole's piece
http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Blind-Spot

So. This is how it is.

Publishers in SA go a little way towards helping their authors market their work, but mostly it is up to us and word of mouth. So please bear with me, I am going to mouth away for a while.

Eloquent Body is the result of over 5 years work. It felt like my life work; I felt propelled to garner everything that had helped me through crises in art, psychology and medicine, and to investigate these fields further. I wrote it to assist my workshop participants and my patients and myself. We all have areas where we do not act in our own best interests, and we need to get curious about that. Methinks.

The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive. This is hugely gratifying, as I did what I had to do, wrestled it down onto the page, and was frequently worried that I was not doing my subject matter justice. Eventually I just had to walk away, and hope that it was good enough.

It turns out that Eloquent Body is a word-of-mouth book; lucky thing, as it has only had two (good) reviews since the launch. I have had a number of people ordering several copies to send to their friends and relatives. One young man asked me to write an inscription to his family member: Dear X, Let go. Get a life. I declined politely.

The more books go out into the world, the more people are likely to talk about it, the more people will buy it. This is not (just) about my retirement plan (heh heh), this is about getting interesting, helpful and collated ideas out into the world.

So, if you liked the book, for the month of August 2012, I am offering copies at R140 each if you fetch them from Kalk Bay or Tokai. If you are wondering about what to give your mother / uncle / friend / lover as a present, please consider Eloquent Body at this much reduced price. You will be gifting me too. You can place orders at dawn.garisch@gmail.com.

Sjoe. Phew. How do I look with my marketing hat on?

    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 13^th to Sunday 16^th September 2012          
     Times :            9am to 2pm daily

     To book:              dawn.garisch@gmail.com

      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.

Working with your Life Stories

Working with your Life Stories A workshop on writing memoir facilitated by Dawn Garisch ‘here I am once again, disguised as myself’ - from 'About Death and Other Things', poem by Aleksandar Ristovic

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 ways of putting our personal stories down on the page.

Beginner writers are welcome.

Venue: The Forge, Windsor Rd, Kalk Bay
Fee: R1400
Dates: Mon 21st – Fri 25th May 2012
Times : 9am to 1pm daily

To bring: 

• Unlined, ring-bound A4 notebook and pen 
• A cushion and a blanket or rug. 
• Two objects from the period of your life that you want to write about - one that represents something you loved about it, and one that represents something you disliked about that time. 

To book:  

dawn.garisch@gmail.com

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 will be published by Modjaji in March. She runs workshops on writing and creative method, is a practising medical doctor and lives in Cape Town.