OneLook: This is a beautiful, multi-functional thesaurus, and reverse dictionary. Look up the description of that word you can't think of, and the site makes at least 100 suggestions. You can also look up single words, and the site suggests synonyms that can be sorted by the letter they start with, rhymes with..., primary vowel,... Continue Reading →
Writing for liberation exercise: play like a child
Last week in class, I watched my tiny kids turn pillows into castles, physically eat and swallow a "pizza" we made out of much spilt glue and coloured-in vegetables, and act out the animals of the masks they wore. I wish I had that amount of imagination, that much freedom in my mind to think... Continue Reading →
Is your writing boring?
I admit I have a longstanding fear of being boring. Or I'm convinced that my writing (and my conversation) is artless and unoriginal. The reality though, is far from that, and in life and in writing, I seem to break most of the rules. I guess in this sense, I'm most sensitive about something that... Continue Reading →
The way I write
I write in a ball. Stuck half way between solid ground and dreamland. Half asleep. So many people say they do their best writing when they are angry or sad and there are huge raging monsters to rip out and beat up. I have moments like that too, and I love the slick oil hard... Continue Reading →
Writing for liberation exercise: understanding creativity
What is creativity? Let's do this exercise, then talk about it. Write a list of ten uses for a toothpick. Then, if you are working on a poem, article, story or even a drawing, write a list of ten alternate ways you could have done it, or ten alternate endings, or beginnings - whatever alternative... Continue Reading →
What is poverty?
The Butterfly Prison on Amazon
Story ache
Every person had at least one incredible story frolicking inside them. But the market chose quick satisfaction, supermarket weekends, air-conditioned adventures, television colonisation, thought minimalisation, bomb production. It made the story people tired. Stories died. Souls put to paper, internal battles portrayed in magic metaphors were blown into the air, then caught in nets and... Continue Reading →
The Human Voice, by Galeano
Some prisoners spent more than ten years buried in solitary cells the size of coffins, hearing nothing but clanging bars or footsteps in the corridors. . .[they] survived because they could talk to each other by tapping on the wall. In that way they told of dreams and memories, fallings in and out of love;... Continue Reading →
Bought and Sold
Smart big awards and prize money Is killing off black poetry It’s not censors or dictators that are cutting up our art. The lure of meeting royalty And touching high society Is damping creativity and eating at our heart. The ancestors would turn in graves Those poor black folk that once were slaves would wonder... Continue Reading →