Nature repeats herself, or almost does:
repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise.
This couplet from the poem "North Haven," by Elizabeth Bishop (Walnut Hill '30) refers first of all to the physical world (autumn leaves, ice crystals, sand dunes, mountain peaks, waves) but it also gives a memorable frame to the nature of language, and thus to task of the writer.
Anyone who would craft words that last, must know and draw from the work of the past. Yet an enormous freedom resides in writing, which, like Nature, only "almost" repeats itself-and a satisfying labor is entailed by Bishop's almost twin heartbeats, "repeat" and "revise."
Writers at Walnut Hill do what comes naturally: they play, seriously, intensely, constructively, with words they've inherited in poems, stories, songs, essays, speeches, and plays. Their experiments, drafts, and revisions provide a glimpse into the future of the craft and, perhaps, the places our Studio Writers might someday take in it. The Writing Studio's emphasis on rigorous observation and inference, wide reading, and experimentation with verbal structures make it a superb place to begin to prepare for any future that involves the written word.
Each Writing Studio year begins with two weeks focused intensively on a major literary work. Students and teachers read the work aloud, discuss its elements, and write experiments designed to respond to the work and some of the issues it raises. Works studied include: Gilgamesh (David Ferry translation), Inferno (John Ciardi translation), War Music (Christopher Logue’s adaptation of The Iliad), two Nigerian plays: “Oba Waja” (Duro Ladipo) and “Death and the King’s Horseman” (Wole Soyinka), and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (Edith Grossman translation).
Courses Offered
Out Loud/Soundings
Out Loud concentrates on oral performance and memorization of written texts; in Soundings, students prepare and record finished performances of their own and established writers’ works.
Experimental Writing Workshop
Weekly composition of and feedback on anonymous “experiments” (in prose and verse) that feature structural play and emulation.
Snaps
The workshop is dedicated to greater clarity, conciseness, and vividness in verbal imagery transformations. Assisted “translation” of texts from French, German, Polish, Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, and other languages.
Crafting Short Fiction
Intensive close reading of exemplary short fiction in conjunction with a workshop dedicated to the polishing of student prose compositions.
Ekphrasis
Experimental writing in response to investigation of visual images.
Folk Fairy Fiction
Broad survey of folktale strategies and motifs and deep investigation of a single culture’s tale-world, alongside composition of contemporary folktales—both on paper and on the air.
Poetics
Introduction to and practice with figures of speech and principles of literary making such as metaphor, image, simile, alliteration, metonymy, paradox, irony, verse measure, stanza structure, narrative structure, paragraph structure, and sentence structure.
Lineages
Exploration and broadening of each student’s self-defined writerly heritage in the assembly of a chronologically arranged “Lineage Book.”
Edit and Publish
Development and refinement of a set of values for good writing, which are expressed as specific criteria used in the judging of the Elizabeth Bishop Prizes in Verse and Prose and in the editing of the literary journal Blue Pencil and other publications.
The Line
Exploration of the line of verse as an artistic medium, its history, and its significance, through careful construction of and investigation of individual lines and passages.
Form Inverse
Close examination of formal verse alongside an experimental workshop with weekly assignments, including such formal verse designs as the sonnet, poulter’s measure, pantoum, blank verse, syllabics, rime royal, and adaptations of the traditional Chinese quatrain.
Playwriting
This four-session minicourse introduces basic principles of dramaturgy such as theatricality, character, plot, thought, rhythm, and diction and emphasizes experimentation with scene structure and schemes such as stichomythia. Each year the Writing Studio joins a handful of high schools in New England to participate in the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s Massachusetts Young Playwrights’ Project, which features teaching visits to the Studio by working playwrights and culminates in a festival of work for the stage by young writers at the BPT in Boston in April.
Individual Tutorials
Seniors in the Studio may devise tutorials that meet one-on-one with individual instructors. Recent Senior Tutorials have engaged: Translating French Poetry The Blues The Personal Essay Text to Screen The Sonnet Humor Hell Nabokov The Line of Verse in English Literature Postmodern Fiction Plague Literature Reading Paradise Lost The Limits of Originality
Excursions
The Studio has been the guest of Toby Lester, Senior Editor of The Atlantic, for a tour of the magazine’s editorial offices and a discussion of literary journal editing. Atlantic editors have also come to the Studio to discuss their craft. Thanks to a generous support from a donor, the Studio expects to attend the biannual Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey in August 2006. The Writing Studio attends readings and performances—for example, Toni Morrison reading from Love at Faneuil Hall in 2003 and Three Plays by Samuel Beckett in 2005. It also performs once a year as the feature of the Natick Outspoken Word series.
Visiting Writers
The Writing Studio sponsors visits by practicing writers who come to campus to share their work and to discuss the craft. Some recent visitors include Melanie Rae Thon, Brad Leithauser, Eric McHenry, Janet Kenney, Andre Dubus III, Lloyd Schwartz, Ronan Noone, Nick McDonnell, Don Share, Perri Klass, and Gjertrud Schnackenberg. At the Spring Gala for 2004, the Writing Studio was host to poet Glyn Maxwell, who read from his work and discussed “Poetry, Pedigree, and Pedagogy.” In April 2006, the Studio will host its first symposium on the perils and pleasures of translation, “Translators’ Notes,” which will feature presentations by and discussions with David Ferry, Afaa Michael Weaver, Jacqueline Pope, Don Share, Marsha Pomerantz, and Harry Thomas. Young writers and their teachers from around New England will join the Studio in this event.
