Writers Workshop – June Paisa Perkins

Returning to Motherland 1#

I never expected that my first trip back to Papua New Guinea, since I moved to Australia as a one year old, would be in my fifties and via zoom and would be working with writers based in three different countries.

Yet, none of us knows our future, and so it was that the last week my first ever Book Week experience, occurred this way.

I was invited by Tina Marie Clark, to join a CYA team, including her, Albert Nayathi, Phil Kettle, Caroline Evari (and works from Michelle Worthington and Dannika Patterson) that has been mostly going to a school there in person for the last ten years.

The last two years they have had to conduct the visit via zoom, because of COVID19.

Although I haven’t done Book Week before, I have done several workshops in libraries, environmental centres, and schools, to mentor creatives of all ages from kindergarten through to people in their seventies, in poetry. Something which became such a passion I ended up writing and publishing a poetry book, Magic Fish Dreaming, for children.

I wrote Magic Fish Dreaming, to express a sense of the place I was living in at the time, which was the Cassowary Coast, in Far North Queensland, as well as to demonstrate different poetry techniques which might appeal to children but also extend them. At the time of composing this work I was facilitating workshops in the community and needed to create original materials not just use what was already out there.

Magic Fish Dreaming, represents all the beauty, grandeur, magic, and heartache and I saw whilst living in that area, all captured for families to relive some of that and hopefully fall in love with poetry.

During this visit, I was able to bring all the experiences of the last few years, in designing workshops, as well as my recent enrolment to teacher train together into my contemporary practice.

I was delighted to see the effect of the workshops on the students and their teacher and teacher assistant. I can truly say I had as much of a feeling of joy out of this as out of being published.

My heart soared to see them engaged with the activities and WRITING! And finally confidently performing work they had collaborated on composing together.

What did we and the school do during the week to reach this point?

Find out in my next post.

to be continued…

ALEA – Meanjin 42nd Writer’s Festival

The 42nd ALEA Meanjin – Brisbane area – Australian Literacy Educators’ Association Young Writers’ Festival (for students from Years 5 to 10) is being held on Thursday 4 July at Griffith University Mt Gravatt Campus.

Featuring a Keynote from Morris Gleitzman and four workshops with a wonderful line up of authors, poets and illustrators – Candice Lemon-Scott; Gregg Dreise; June Perkins and Katrin Dreiling.

Bookings open from the 7th of June https://www.alea.edu.au/events/event/alea-meanjin-42nd-writers-camp (The link should work from the 7/06)

Ink of Light just over two weeks to go!

With 12 presenters, 16 sessions, 3 surprises, panels, workshops, a keynote speech full of music, and interesting speakers it’s going to be a brilliant couple of days!

Looking forward to catching up with old friends, making new ones, and community building through the arts, especially writing.

Visit Ink of Light for more information and to register.

Finding the Heart

The last few months I have been revisiting picture book drafts and short stories, that didn’t feel like they were quite there yet.

Something special was missing. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. But I didn’t want to give up on the potential.

I had to have a huge break from them to see these pieces with a new heart. I attended a few workshops and made tips lists for myself. I read books on writing. I read books I loved. I waited and then I leapt back into my stories with hope!

What was I really trying to say in them? How could I give them the life they deserved and make them leap off the page into the reader’s imagination?

I reflected on where do I want to go with my writing? Where do I want to take the reader? How can I invite them to a conversation without a set idea of the answer? How can I make them care about the characters?

My new notebook for jotting down ideas in inspiring spaces, just looking at the cover makes me smile.

Here are the top ten techniques that have been helping me find the heart of my stories.

Visualising the scenes and story boarding the works, including consideration of the turns pages to keep someone reading.
Ensuring a story is played out to a length that allows me to do everything I intended without limitations (some picture books are short stories!)
Changing the perspective the story is told from but retaining the overall scene and setting.
Adding a sense of rhythm in the language from poetic techniques and keeping that going throughout the piece so it is a musical sound to the ear.
Recognising when I am in the mood to work on a particular piece and going with the call of the muse. Especially when it comes to hearing the music of words in my head.
Removing the ‘thought verbs’ and rewriting the scenes without these.
Playing with point of view, by extending it, restricting it, moving from first person to third person until it feels just right
Adding the back story and pulling the back story out and hinting at it.
Leaving the stories on a tricky point and day dreaming options to resolve that.
Changing the title to a key phrase in the story that I can use as a motif throughout the work.

So far, so good with this methodology. One picture book became a short story and was successful in making it into an anthology.

One picture book remains a picture book, but the characters are so much closer to what I wanted them to be, and this one feels almost ready for submission.

Another three picture books are in the process of rewrites and again may be short stories, or short chapter books.

One flash fiction piece, from the ideas for my much longer memoir, made a long list for the Brisbane Writers Festival. I will go back to the piece again and work on it and submit it somewhere. Maybe I have lots of flash fiction pieces ready to go!

Another picture book is a definite chapter book and is progressing well. This one had a change of perspective

My utmost thanks to Gabrielle Wang, Isobelle Carmody, Virginia Lowe, Giuseppe Poli, and Trent Dalton, for enabling me to press on in this journey with something they said in a talk, a tweet or a workshop, or something that they wrote that sparked a renewal of this journey, and also to other people who regularly read my work and give me some ideas of how to develop it.

Meeting Trent Dalton at the Brisbane Writers Festival

Some people are great sounding boards, as I tell them the story the solutions begin to just pop out of my brain, so thank you to anyone being that.

Today I have a whole day to write and revise. I might even begin to tackle unfinished novels. Whilst I love revising, I keep jotting down new ideas and give myself space for free writes.

One series of new ideas, free writes, is just called Australia’s Maya Angelou, and in this space I can write anything mostly from memories, I am not sure if I will ever share it, but it is a place where anything goes with my writing, and I just experiment with all of the things outlined. I think in these free writes there are more stories, poems and even one day finally that elusive memoir that might mean something to others.

So signing off from blogville land, to go visit my characters and their worlds, with a renewed sense of joy and a willingness to craft them until they have that special something.

June Perkins aka Gumbootspearlz

Poet at Play 4: Writing inspired by Art

Ripple Poetry

QAGOMA/ Sonja Carmichael

At the moment I am working on something special: writing inspired by art for QAGOMA. Later on this year my writing will go in display in the gallery alongside the art works.

The process so far has included exploring the art in the Australian Collection of the gallery and absorbing the atmosphere the art is displayed in and finding out the parameters of the project from the Engagement staff.

I am hoping to use some of my writing for children background in the works, and considering the way a narrative might weave stories out of the art works as well as employing poetic techniques in my response work.

As part of this journey I have been researching the works, their artists, and the intentions and materials of the artists. This is easy to do via the captions with the work, and the website of the QAGOMA which…

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