Residential
Workshop - Colombo
I consider my self fortunate to be a part of write to
reconcile project. It is a creative writing project to evoke the talents of the
young writers. In collaboration with National Peace Council and sponsored by
Norwegian Embassy and United States Embassy a series of residential workshops
and online workshops have been organized.
Here, I am going to scribble about the residential
workshop held in Colombo from 7th – 10th February 2013.
Seven of us -three
lecturers from Jaffna University(JU): Dr.Mrs.Sivapalan, Arthie Denicious and
Lavanya Paramanathan, three literature students from JU Sarmatha Santhirasekaram,
Arivarasy Muthulingam and Vithuja Rajmohan and along with them I myself went
from Jaffna. We reached Colombo at 4 am and were waiting near Lake house for a
van to pick us up. A small car came and we were gazing at each other as it was
not enough for us. To our relief we were then accommodated in a van. We reached
‘Help age’-the venue of our residential workshop at about 5 am. Altogether
there were twenty five participants and all of us were assigned into rooms;
four participants in each room. As my room mates were to arrive in the
afternoon, I was all alone in the morning looking at the wall and counting the minutes.
All the ghost stories and movies I read and watched came in my mind. When you
are alone the stuff you do not want to think about will come into your mind
first.
We were given t-shirts, a study pack, note book, pens,
pencils and Rupees seven thousand. Three thousand for our bus fare, two thousand
to buy books and two thousand an extra money. Amrita and Shiromi were very kind
and guiding us all the way. One by one my room mates Shalini, Nushelle and Ella
arrived at the scene. The workshop started at 4.30pm. Shyam Selvadurai, a renowned
Sri Lankan author who won the Lambda Literary award for his book `Funny Boy’
started the workshop with a warming up session. He is the author of “Cinnamon
Gardens” and “Swimming in the Monsoon Sea”. Nayomi Munaweera, whose first novel
“Island Of A Thousand Mirrors” is in the long list of the Man Asian Literary
Prize 2012, helped Shyam in conducting the work shop. We were divided into
groups and were given individual and group activities as well.
The warming
up exercise: Shyam instructed us to write a funny and
interesting incident recently happened in our life. So I started writing about
my announcing in our primary sports meet with Benick Roshna. Both of us browsed
the internet and took jokes to be narrated in between the events during the
sports meet. To our disappointment no one laughed at our jokes as they were busy watching the
events of their children. We sadly announced that no one laughed at our jokes.
To our surprise we heard a burst of laughter from the audience, considering our
last sentence as a joke. I wrote this incident and exchanged it with Arthie
acca. Shyam again instructed us to draw a picture for the narrated incident of
our partner. Then the sheet was handed over to the other person. He/she will
write something regarding the picture. We did it again and again till the sheet
came to the hands of the owner. Everyone laughed to see that the pictures and
the original incidents had no connection.
Shyam started off with clichés, metaphors and similes.
We were given the beginnings of sentences and instructed to finish the rest
using similes and metaphors. I filled the sentences like
“Touching her dying father’s hand was like seeing a
falling star”
“The morning sun tastes like sweet embraces”
The following exercise is called magic senses
exercise. As before we were given several beginnings like “My hands can……”, “My
magic hands can…..” We must write two
sentences for five senses. Altogether there will be ten sentences. Here are
some of my write up.
“My hands can feel the affectionate touch of my
mother”
“My magic hands can feel the touch of God”
“My eyes can see the overwhelming joy in my brother”
Then we moved on to writing similes and metaphors for
colours red and blue. After that we combined metaphors and similes for war
and peace. We were instructed to write two sentences with metaphor/simile
regarding peace and war. Next he moved
on to plot structure, describing inciting incident, rising actions, the climax,
the epiphany, resolution, profluence and decision. Our next lesson is on point
of views. Shyam beautifully described each point of view with examples first
person pedestal, first person lyrical, third person light penetration, third
person deep penetration and finally omniscient narrator. We were given
exercises to be done for each point of views.
We were briefed out about character building , how the
character should evolve and grow, should have a bass in human nature, should be
unique, thought to be put into them and they think like real people. Each group
was given photographs and a set of questions like name, his/her age and etc.
Another exercise regarding character is that the groups were given a photograph
which contains two characters. We must create a profile for them describing the
characters. Further we did an individual exercise called ‘I have a secret’.
Each of us wrote about the secret of a character.
Shyam taught us to write “Haiku”, a Japanese poetry
form. In English haiku is traditionally written in three lines, five syllables
in the first line, seven syllables in the second line and five syllables in the
third line. All of us tried writing haiku. My trials are as follows.
“Little brother, lovely ball
At the porch jumping down
Smiling granny hugs him tight.”
The next lesson was on line breaks. Enjambed line, end
stopped line and self enclosed lines were discussed. We identified the line
breaks in some poems. On the final day each of us wrote poems for peace in self
enclosed lines and war in enjambed lines in free verse using the metaphors and
similes in our exercises. I scribbled the following
Peace
An orange which quenches our thirst.
A canoe which sails softly.
A violin that embraces our hearts.
The white wails of an angel.
The face of an innocent child.
The soft drizzles that slowly kisses the flowers.
This is peace the eternal bliss.
War
An onion which causes tears in
the eyes of the people and
forced them to shudder at the
heavy sound of the army truck
which has a base drum inside
breaks the calmness and creates horror
like a ferocious line that grabs our throat
it is the grey giant war!
Last but not least we were instructed to write a poem
in free verse, using the metaphors we used for the colour red. I wrote the
following.
The sight of my house burning during riots, Red!!!
The pain of feeling my brother’s last touch, Red!!
The boiling hatred inside my heart to be burst out,
Red!!!
The sorrowful cry of a helpless victim Red!
The nasty smell comes from the ferocious animal
evidently its Red!!
The angelic face of a newly born child, ending the
tyranny of Red.
In between the workshop, participants were taken to
Sapumal foundation, where we witnessed a collection of paintings by Sri Lankan
painters. Geoffrey Bawa’s house is
really an architectural wonder-not only the minute designs, the older furniture,
the roofs, floor walls and paintings but also each and every aspect in that
place proclaimed Geoffrey Bawa’s glorious fame.
Our next visit was to the place of `write to reconcile
web developers`where we were described of our online workshops. The groups were
divided into five chat rooms where we will be posting our creative pieces.
After the Colombo workshop, each participant should post a creative piece, an
editorial letter for others’ work and discuss it with our chat room members.
After the residential workshop in Jaffna, we will post another creative piece
and the same procedure will take place repeatedly. The participants should select one of their two creative pieces and those writings will be published in Write to reconcile anthology in September.
In the book shop I filled my bags with Kiran Desai’s
“The Inheritance Of Loss”, Nihal De Silva’s “The far spent day” and
Nayomi’s “An Island of a thousand
mirrors”. On the third day we watched a traditional dance programme by Chitrasena
troupe.
Two short films were screened to us, a film about Ai Weiwei, a Chinese
contemporary artist and a film called “Lemon Tree”.
On the final day the workshop ended at 1.00p.Each
participant waved good bye to each other. Now, We are eagerly looking forward
to participate in the Jaffna residential workshop with lots of thanks to Shyam,
Nayomi, Amrita and Shiromi.
All Rights Reserved © Saambavi Sivaji
All Rights Reserved © Saambavi Sivaji