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Emerging Writers Festival
The Emerging Writers Festival is happening in Melbourne, Australia next month.
The Emerging Writers’ Festival is a not-for-profit organisation whose foundations are built on supporting emerging writers. They are a place where creativity and innovation is celebrated, where new talent is nurtured and where diverse voices from across Australia are represented.
For all sessions and workshops check out their website here:
What Inspires Me: Poem by Maya Angelou
One of the first female poets I came across as a teen whom I connected with deeply was Maya Angelou. Her words spoke to me then and they speak to me now….
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
by Maya Angelou
Inspiration: Sylvia Plath says “Have the guts….”
What Inspires Me: Dali
This surrealist’s art has always made me wonder at the “characters” within his art. They speak to me of places I’m too wary to travel to, whilst giving me insight into the complex nature of his perception of life.
This is my favourite Dali piece which is titled “Woman Aflame” .
It helps me momentary escape and explore infinite possibilities as a woman as I compartmentalize my responsibilities and dreams…I might be held up to society’s standards but that is just a crutch which I use to propel myself forward.
Book Inspiration: Aesop’s Fables
The first book I recall from my earliest memories as a child, is learning to read using Aesop’s Fables. I loved the simple story telling full of allegory and re-read them over and over again. Filled with moral and ethical lessons I feel this is the book which shaped me the most.
What inspires me: Quote by Dr Samuel Johnson
I truly believe that whatever you write will have an affect on others so this quote rings true with me…
“the only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life or better to endure it.” Dr Samuel Johnson
What Inspires Me: Travelling
I’ve been away for a long vacation which I haven’t had in years. I travelled to some beautiful places filled with nature which always inspires me.
I wrote everyday and continue to do so, focusing on my fiction as well as non fiction.
Its triggered a new story in me which is a completely different genre and so I look forward to seeing it bloom.
What Inspires Me: Poem by Wordsworth
Love Wordsworth and this sonnet which to me sings of a writers freedom yet being trapped…
Nuns fret not
Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
W. Wordsworth
What Inspires Me: Antiques
I have a slight obsession with some antiques – usually the ones which are from early to mid last century.
Looking and touching these items, I ponder who bought it, why they bought it and what they did with it.
It enables my imagination to run wild and imagine the various time periods and the kinds of lives these items touched.
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