Online internet courses by Call of the Page

Are you interested in a Call of the Page course? We run courses on haiku; tanka; tanka stories/prose; haibun; shahai; and other genres.

Please email Karen or Alan at our joint email address: admin@callofthepage.org
We will let you know more about these courses.

Call of the Page (Alan & Karen)
Showing posts with label online course. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online course. Show all posts

Friday, January 08, 2021

Introducing... Haiku a friendly immersive course designed by Karen Hoy, with feedback from Alan Summers

 




Introducing... Haiku

 

The Winter 2021 course, from January 11th to March 8th, is now fully booked, so we have scheduled the another Introducing... Haiku! 


The course starts at the end of April 2021. The payment button on this weblink is now open for the April course. Thank you!


weblink:

https://www.callofthepage.org/courses/haiku-courses/introducing-haiku/



Start Date: Tuesday 27th April 2021 

End Date: Tuesday 22nd June 2021

 

Level: This course is designed to be gentle enough for complete beginners (at haiku, or at creative writing), but at the same time stimulating enough to introduce haiku as a new form to those who are already writing poetry or prose. It can also be used as a "warm-up" to our intermediate course. It's also a "back to what we first loved about haiku" for writers who would enjoy a reset. A highly pleasurable course to run, and we trust, take part in!

 

No of Assignments and Feedback: 3

 


Group Size:  up to 7. April course now booking.

 


Course Description: Participants are sent introductory materials on the start date, which will include the first assignment briefing. 


We'll engage with haiku as a reader, using gentle and evocative prose exercises to expand our understanding of what these tiny haiku can do. 


As the course continues, we'll consciously encourage our own senses of observation, and learn to key in to moments and observations that inspire haiku. 


By the third and final assignment (or sooner if you are ready) we'll have built up to writing complete haiku poems. 


There'll be feedback from the tutor on the prose exercises, line exercises, and the complete poems, in a safe and nurturing atmosphere. 


By the end of the course you should have three poems, and an inspiring foundation on which to move forward with your writing. 

 

Full Cost: £108 (approximately US$146).

 

Early Bird Rate: £99 (approximately US$134)




Alan Summers is the main online tutor & mentor for Call of the Page relating to haiku, its related genres, and tanka poetry. 


He is also the founding editor of The Blo͞o Outlier Journal, and a Pushcart nominated poet for haiku. As well as being a Japan Times award-winning writer Alan is also both a Pushcart Prize nominated, and Best Small Fictions nominated poet, for haibun.


For more details, and my “provenance” to reveal that I will take great care and diligence, do check out: https://area17.blogspot.com/2017/01/happy-new-year-and-brand-new-honour.html 


The Blo͞o Outlier Journal Winter Christmas Eve Special Issue 2020 (Issue #1) ed. Alan Summers

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SdwR7QdRK7QP73c3ezhCEWBf5I4r8AGb/view?usp=sharing 





Karen Hoy (Newport, Wales), poet, filmmaker, is Courses Director of Call of the Page. 


Karen has been tanka editor for Blithe Spirit, the journal of the British Haiku Society. 


Her haiku appear in many of the major haiku anthologies including:


Another Country: Haiku Poetry from Wales, Naad Anunaad, A Vast Sky, Wishbone Moon, Another Trip Around the Sun: 365 Days of Haiku for Children Young and Old, Last Train Home, haiku, tanka and rengay. 



Karen's poetry is included in Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press 2017). Other poetry that Karen appears in are: "My Mother Threw Knives" (Second Light Publications 2006) as well as Mslexia.


Karen also appears in ‘Ten Years On’ the Welsh Poetry Competition Anthology 2012-2016.


‘Ten Years On’ is a celebration of the best poetry submitted to the international Welsh Poetry Competition between 2012-2016. A diverse look at the world we inhabit - alive, energetic, melodic, unrepentant and moving. This anthology is for all poets who truly feel. For the brave, the exuberant, the feisty, the outrageous and the rule breakers. A chance to revel in the moment and not be afraid. After 10 successful years and nearly 5,000 entries from all over the world the competition is now firmly established on the international literary calendar. This collection contains some formidable poetry, written by established poets as well as many new voices, all of whom were fearless enough to push back the boundaries. The book also includes the judges’ comments by famous Welsh writers John Evans, Sally Spedding and Eloise Williams. ‘Ten Years On’ is a beautiful collection of bright, modern poetry.


Her documentary and wildlife credits include work for the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, and Discovery Channels. 


Karen has also been Highly Commended in the BBC Wildlife Magazine's Nature Writer of the Year competition (2009).








Friday, December 21, 2018

Introducing... Haiku - a new online course for continuing our fascination with the haiku genre




This course is now sold out, thank you!
We've had expressions of interest for another course later in the year. 

If you are interested as well you can contact Karen at:

Or join our newsletter:




We are now doing a second Introducing...Haiku due to its success!

Start Date: Thursday 2nd April 2020  
End Date: Thursday 28th May 2020



An exciting new course for those of you either new to writing haiku, or would like more support on a journey you have already begun.

Evocative exercises will expand our understanding of what these tiny haiku poems are capable of, and encourage our senses of observation, and of the moments we'll capture. 

Feedback is given in a safe and nurturing atmosphere. 

By the end of the course we'll have an inspiring foundation on which to continue to move forward with our writing. 





Our very first course was the beginning of 2019!


Start Date: Thursday January 31st 2019

End Date: Thursday March 28th 2019




For more information: 

Saturday, March 03, 2018

The Passion of Haibun 2018 plus special extended early bird rate online course

What is haibun, and what is the Passion of Haibun?
The early bird rate is still on, and as an extra winter and snow offer, will stay for this course, but it starts next week!
Start Date: Monday March 5th 2018 


An example:


When bitter can mean please... 
the handle of the cup holding a coffee with a fern like design in its froth, is like her nose, and both are porcelain. 
And when I order something bitter I remember your German, and how you kissed the word Bitte that held the meaning of please, and other meanings. 
Berlin afternoon
the rain in your hair 
passing time 

It all started with a coffee, no hold that thought, we haven’t got there yet. You came over and said your first Bitte, “May I help you?” I started with cappuccino.
The second Bitte was when you brought over the coffee saying “Here you go”
There were many occasions that asked for Bitte, after all I was working on a novel, I was going to be here for some time. Now I wanted my own Bitte which meant “Can you help me please?” The request was for research purposes, and I have no idea how I ended up in another German city. 
Another barista was going to say Bitte, all over again. 
uncoiling the moon
out of doorways in shadow 
midnight rain 

Alan Summers
Award credit: Wonderfold Winner January 2017 

republished in:
Narrow Road 
A Literary Magazine from India showcasing Flash Fiction, Poetry and Haibun 
April 2017 Inaugural Issue 
The Three Narrow Road PDFs for 2017 are available:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1l0x8JNn9Iq4bZLZ3YmiRQ6LB4iO42Ftq





Haibun 
is the practice of interspersing prose with haiku, and of course much more. It’s about placement and dispersal within two different genres. It’s the interstice between them, and the intervention and intersections of words, and ultimately our lives as we travel the days and months, as Matsuo Basho opens with, in his classic "Narrow Road to the Deep North”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oku_no_Hosomichi 

Haibun is still expanding as a form, and at an exciting point in its development. There's something about haibun, as it somersaults, shifts, hops or glides between poem to prose, that seems to open up another dimension in how we can write and communicate, and taking the journey we can involve our readers with, each mile. 


The Passion of Haibun
The early bird rate is still on, and as an extra winter and snow offer, will stay for this course, but it starts next week!
Start Date: Monday March 5th 2018  



Breaking down the invisible (in haibun)
   
With a slight shift, a momentary aside, a shuffle of cards, legerdemain, the author leaves the main story to dive into side alleys. But how is the ‘real’ narrative still kept when we diverge from the main story? How we do we maintain the momentum, the blood flow? 

Blood vessels include arteries, capillaries, and veins which are responsible for transporting blood throughout the body.
Source: Boundless. “Arteries, Veins, and Capillaries.”  26 May. 2016.

The poetry dynamic within haibun is as much about what we think is the main story; but also it’s those nano-stories or even “broken narratives” that haiku can be, hiding on the sidelines, that just require the torch of prose to bring them alive, and equally in turn haiku can light up the prose in other ways perhaps not possible with a straight linear narrative of prose.

— Breaking down the invisible (in haibun) by Alan Summers from:


More about haibun:

Including a short history of haibun:



Monday, February 27, 2017

The Passion of Haibun online course - combining prose and haiku poems into a unique and challenging new medium



We run haibun courses off and on throughout the year, here's one just starting (March 2018), and we are maintaining the early bird rate:  https://www.callofthepage.org/learning/online-courses/haibun-courses/





The Passion of Haibun - 
A Call of the Page  online course:
Haibun is an alchemy of combining prose with haiku poems to create a unique genre of writing: It’s equally at home in poetry; creative short fiction/flash fiction; and creative non-fiction; as well as journal writing; nature writing; diary writing; and in other forms of art. 

Answer the call of the page, the call of the wild!  It’s about rewriting/rewiring the world.
- Alan Summers, 
President, United Haiku and Tanka Society
co-founder of Call of the Page. 






“We're all there trying to make the story…as good as it can be. It's a constant struggle to get it down, get it clear, and understand that your intentions are the same, whether you're [a beginner] writing a short story or a writer with seven published novels. The continually reassuring thing is that we're all novices when we start a new work.”
   
Paraphrasing Alice McDermott (Inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame, 2013)


“You have to be passionate about your subject…to write a quality haibun…pieces that kept [you] awake at night… I want to be startled by all the elements of a haibun (title, prose, haiku, tanka). I want haibun that compel me to read them again and again as I strive to learn something new about what it is like to be a human being.”
   
Paraphrasing Glenn G. Coats, Some Thoughts about Haibun
Contemporary Haibun Online (January 2017, vol 12 no. 4)


We are poets always in interesting times, and the haibun mix of prose or even prose poetry combined with the short verses of haiku that are “pockets of now”, and cemented into the present, feels vitally appropriate, and in keeping with our evolving and changing societies. - Alan Summers

"Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... [Write] knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them." —Edwidge Danticat


Is this you? If so, you belong on this course. You don’t think this is you? Then you equally belong on this course. 
- Alan Summers

***

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
—Sylvia Plath

As we have entered and gone beyond the second decade of the 21st Century, perhaps it is time to look back, look forward, and never moreso than looking uncritically at everything happening from family to work to social history.
- Alan Summers

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” —Maya Angelou

If the course is over-subscribed we will create a waiting list for you as it’s too important not to have you as part of The Passion of Haibun. You are too important to be left out. 
-Alan Summers

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that? —Kurt Vonnegut


***

Breaking down the invisible (in haibun)
   
With a slight shift, a momentary aside, a shuffle of cards, legerdemain, the author leaves the main story to dive into side alleys. But how is the ‘real’ narrative still kept when we diverge from the main story? How we do we maintain the momentum, the blood flow? 

Blood vessels include arteries, capillaries, and veins which are responsible for transporting blood throughout the body.
Source: Boundless. “Arteries, Veins, and Capillaries.”  26 May. 2016.

The poetry dynamic within haibun is as much about what we think is the main story; it’s those nano-stories or even “broken narratives” that haiku can be, hiding on the sidelines, that just require the torch and touch of prose to bring them alive, and equally in turn they tend to light up the prose in other ways perhaps not possible with a straight linear narrative of prose. 
— Breaking down the invisible (in haibun) by Alan Summers

***

“Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.” —Margaret Atwood

"Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence." —Alice Walker

"I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it."
—Arundhati Roy

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. 
-Franz Kafka

“Know what you write more than write what you know.” Paraphrased from Annie Proulx


***

Carolyn See said: 
“Every word a woman writes changes the story of the world, revises the official version.”
Emma Cueto adds:
Because let's face it, the "official version" of the world could do with some revising. (Plus, the world could always do with more good books, whether they're by men or women).


***

“A word after a word after a word is power.”
—Margaret Atwood

Do you have the call of the page in your blood, and a passion? Join us on this new online course; haibun needs you, even if you don’t know it yet. - Alan Summers

For more information please contact Karen:







Journeys 2015: 

















Journeys 2017:


.
Other links:

The Thoughtful Raven - haibun (haiku+prose) - after Ted Hughes and The Thought Fox - Kurt Jackson and The Thoughtful Raven (Charcoal and ink sketch 2007) - ekphrastic poem | haiku | haibun:


Including a short history of haibun:

Alan's haibun that appears in Journeys 2015: