Day 5 - SWIFT 2018 - written by Deirdre Mc Clay

Day 5 and our last session of SWIFT 2018 – two demos, authors’ chair and goodbyes (for now).

The final log of the week was read by Katie who recounted her key moments from day 4. It’s such a pleasure to hear a personal perspective on the day’s learning and to share again in fun and humour. Thank you, Katie, for volunteering so willingly.

After the log, Amy, a post primary English teacher, demonstrated exercises in ‘found poetry’, personal writing and six-word stories. The found poetry was new to me and provided a fun and entertaining way of constructing a poem and thinking about language and meaning. Amy explained that it works particularly well for reluctant writers and can be combined with white space for those who want to add drawings. Found poetry involves creating a poem using words and/or phrases from another text e.g. a prose piece. Amy gave us an example handout and then two pages each from a novel. We had to write a poem using only what was available in the prose piece – like a word collage. Small words can be added like ‘the’, or tenses changed, but the poem must be found from the original text and must be meaningful. I really enjoyed the exercise and reading my effort in a small group. One of our group, Marina, read her found poem ‘Togaless Yoga’ to all – our minds boggled.  Thank you, Amy, for an interesting and informative demo.

Next, we enjoyed a break and a chat, and then came the final demo of SWIFT 2018. It was a cracker. Hilde, who teaches adults, demonstrated use of photovoice. She adapted a three-month project into an hour-long session for us that was fun and gave a sense of the method.  She explained photovoice, which is use of photos taken by participants to generate themes, discussion, interpretation and meaning. It was developed by Caroline Wang and Mary Ann Burris to help express community needs, problems and desires. It is highly participatory, action based and often has a social justice agenda. It is a very flexible and collaborative approach.

Hilde had previously asked SWIFT participants to send her 2 or 3 photos each that represented their week at SWIFT. She put us into 3 groups of 4-5 people and gave us a pack of participant photos (different by group). She asked us to discuss the images as a group and to decide on one overarching theme. The exercise was both entertaining and enlightening, as we strived as a group to make meaning from about 10 different images. Somehow, in the end, we found a beginning, middle and end – we made a story. Our small group theme was ‘journey to inner peace’.  Next, all small groups shared what they had created and their overall theme. As a full group, we discussed and picked one overarching theme to work on. We chose ‘Rocky Road to Revelations’. Using this theme, we each chose one image to work on individually and as a prompt to write a few lines. Now came the fun bit. Hilde had put all the images on a Powerpoint – she removed any images not chosen as prompts for our lines. We ended by playing the Powerpoint of images, and taking it in turns to read our newly written lines as our image appeared on the screen. Thank you, Hilde, for an insightful glimpse at the power of photovoice. I’m already thinking of ways that I might use it in higher education classes.

And so, all things must come to an end.  Before we parted, we enjoyed one final highlight of SWIFT – authors’ chair. Our final gathering was to celebrate our writing efforts by listening to readings from the volunteers in our pop-up writing groups. What a treat. Thank you, Ellie, Lorraine, Katie and Katie (yes, two Katies) for sharing your work. We heard about sibling rivalry over Easter eggs that ended in a bitter, dark chocolate tragedy. This was followed by the properly dark tale of an abused boy and man (with the ghost of a school mistress in the mix). Then the clever and funny tale of a man struggling with the embarrassment of retaining a strong Catholic faith despite desperately trialling atheism. And finally, we were treated to the WIP first chapter of an emerging novel. Exciting to think of the influences of SWIFT, now and in the future.

Before we went our separate ways, I managed a conversation with Anne Marie about her student rap demo on day 2. She will tell her class that we were all blown away by their Dublin rap – hooray to involving new genres and new voices in the teaching of writing.