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graveyard of DOOM index < | > It's another biggish weekend looming - another big week, in fact, but I'm pleased to say that for the first time in a while I'm not feeling totally overwhelmed. In fact, despite the largish workload that awaits I have to say I'm feeling pretty much capable of dealing with everything that the rest of this year has in store. I think part of this positivity has to do with this year's to-do list finally starting to shrink in size a little. Quite a few obligations have been discharged in the last three weeks, which would go a long way towards explaining why this sense of happiness is tinged with the distinct flavour of relief. This Wednesday just gone was the announcement of the winners of the State Library of Victoria's "150 Books - 150 Years - 150 Words" competition (MC-ed by yours truly), an all-morning presentation in Storey Hall, the crazy RMIT gallery/seminar space that looks exactly like Castle Grayskull's little sister, all purple and green and decked out with geodesic shapes bulging out of its façade and lining the interior walls. The auditorium where the gig was held had two huge pink geodomes embedded in the ceiling, and it was only on-stage nerves and the strict running order that stopped me from making jokes about how proud RMIT was to finally be able to display the energon crystals from beyond Beta Centauri in public. The bulk of the presentation involved the ten winners, all aged between 10 and 15, coming on stage and reading out their 150-word essays about why the particular book they'd chosen from the list of 150 Victorian books should be the only one saved if a huge tidal wave were to destroy the State Library of Victoria. There was a fairly cute moment towards the end of the day when I had to arrange for some kind of box to be brought on stage so that the youngest winner, 10-year-old Noah, could be seen from behind the podium as he read his winning entry. Among the prizes the kids won for being chosen were an autographed copy of the book of their choice (selected from the list of 150), a tour of the Age's offices (the Age being the major sponsor of the event), and a zinemaking workshop with me (Lookit me! I'm a prize!). It was nice to hang out with the ten kids and shoot the shit while we talked about zines and I got them started making their own eight-pagers. They were friendly and smart and genuinely curious about what I had to say, even the cynical girl from Beechworth. It's always a tonic hanging around intelligent kids. I was so buoyed by how much these kids impressed me that I didn't even mind when, later that day, I found out that none of the entries into the competition had voted to rescue Man Bites Dog from the tidal wave. Thursday and Friday of the week before I was out in the far eastern suburbs, Knox to be specific, teaching single-class poetry workshops to groups of year eights and year elevens. This mainly consisted of reading them my own poems and then trying to get them writing their own poems. For the year eights, it only took one class before I discovered that the guessing-game poem exercise where I ask them to describe a colour without using the word for that colour or any synonyms was a bit too demanding, and quickly switched to the list-poem exercise where I get them to write a list of things they either love or hate and then they read it out loud. The year elevens were cool with the "broken metaphor" exercise, though (come up with a metaphor or simile that doesn't work, like "swims like a bicycle" and try to work out how you could use it to actually describe something). I don't often get to deal with the upper levels of high schools - teachers are way too protective about the exams and assignments their senior students have to complete, so extracurricular stuff like me is hardly ever allowed. But when I do get them, it's great to work with kids who, by dint of their age, have a level of sophistication that allows you to be more challenging with the exercises you give them. From what the English teachers who helped supervise the classes had said to me, you would have thought that the majority of the kids who I was performing for and teaching to were abominable little unredeemable shits, but I didn't think they were that bad. Sure, they were noisy and a lot of them weren't really concentrating too much, and I could definitely sense an element of derision and mockery coming from them as they watched the loud weird guy talk to them about poems, but every single class I spoke to had at least one kid who seemed genuinely interested, and asked a sincere question that had something to do with poetry. It's hackneyed, but you know, if I reached only one kid in the entire two days, then my time has in no way been wasted. And anyway, if you're fourteen years old and you don't spend at least part of your day making fun of grownups, then something's wrong with the balance of the universe. Starting next Monday I've got an entire week of teaching lined up, having been invited to do a week writer-in-residence at a posh old private junior school in Kew. The age level I'll be dealing with is grade 6 to year 8, so that's - what? - 10 to 14? I've never taught 10 year olds poetry before, so just to make sure I've got enough live ammunition in the form of poetry writing exercises that are easy to explain and fun, I tracked down a copy of Peter MacFarlane's excellent Doing Bombers off the Jetty, which is full of good, simple poetry-writing exercises for high-school students. With MacFarlane at my side, I feel as ready as I'll ever be. I'm thinking of keeping a journal of the week ahead, a la On Subbing, one of my favourite US zines, which is written by an integration aide about the classes he visits and the students he works with. If I do, I'll post daily entries up here. Lord knows I won't be good for much else besides blogging at the end of a five-period day. I have no idea how teachers do it. And after that there are no more teaching gigs on the horizon, no performances lined up, and only a few freelance deadlines to meet. Three months ago I started saying "no" to everything that was offered to me in an attempt to pare down my life and allow myself enough time to finish the work on this damn animation in time to hand it up at the start of November. Three months ago the list of prior commitments ran to about five teaching gigs, one literary journal, three poetry performances, three freelance contracts and four school assignments. Now it's only one teaching gig, one freelance gig, one literary journal and two school assignments - although you could argue it's only one school assignment, since I just this week got the okay from one of my lecturers to count the freelance gig as school assignment #2. And once all that's taken care of - say, by early December this year - I'll finally be able to get back to writing my god-damn novel. |
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