Expressive writing and its benefits for you as a writer.
Led by Susan Turk Mozer, founder of the Toronto Writers Collective, and Bronwyn Singleton and Susan Ksiezopolski, this workshop explored how expressive writing engages people at all levels of their writing journeys.
Established as a non-profit corporation in 2012, the Toronto Writers Collective has trained over 160 volunteer writing workshop facilitators in the TWC method. The Toronto Writers Collective provides generative creative writing workshops to unheard populations honouring authentic voice. Our method encourages deep exploratory risk-taking writing, often inspiring stories told for the first time. Based on the seminal book, Writing Alone and With Others, by writing teacher Pat Schneider .
Susan Turk Mozer founded the Toronto Writers Collective in 2012. Susan studied with Pat Schneider, founder of the Amherst Writers and Artist Method and author of Writing Alone and With Others, on which the TWC is based. She has led expressive writing workshops in San Francisco, New York City, Boston and in Malawi, Africa. She is a graduate of University of California Los Angeles and has made encouraging authentic voice her life’s work.
Bronwyn Singleton has a Ph.D. in Philosophy and a Diploma in Psychotherapy. She works in private practice in Toronto. Bronwyn is also a Lead Facilitator with the Toronto Writer’s Collective, a charitable organization offering creative writing workshops in the GTA. She is thrilled to represent TWC at the Diaspora Dialogues.
Susan Ksiezopolski is an award-winning writer, HeartMath Building Personal Resilience Coach, and a Jack Canfield Certified Trainer. She has published two poetry books, “My Words” and “Writing for Change” as well as two writing aides “The Writer’s Workbook” and “Fuel Your Creativity”. Her work has also been featured in various anthologies, magazines and on-line platforms. A graduate of the Humber School for Writers and a Lead Training Facilitator with Toronto Writers Collective (TWC), Susan delivers WriteWell workshops across the GTA. To find out more, visit www.mywordsnow.com.
Together with MyToronto, the TWC created a Creative Writing Contest, using the winning photos for MyToronto’s 2020 calendar as prompts. The prompts were distributed across the GTA in our Writing Workshops.
The photos were unveiled and six of the winners of the Creative Writing Contest will read at Metro Hall on Wednesday, September 18, 2019. They met with the photographers who provided the visual prompts at the reception. All found the event stimulating and inspiring. Stay tuned, some of the winning pieces are featured in our September newsletter and posted on our website. One award-winning article has been printed in Toronto’s newest newspaper: The Bridge, connecting people, places and ideas from the downtown east.
In partnership with MYTORONTO and Ve’ahavta we are happy to announce the winners of our July 2019 Prompt of the Month.
Photo prompts, provided by the MYTORONTO photograph contest were provided to Toronto Writers Collective workshop participants across the GTA during the month of July.
The following are the prize winning entries we received.
Firefighter
By My-Ha Trinh
Firemen in Canada and the whole wide world do very important work at a very dangerous job. I don’t like it when fire sirens give me a scare and almost give me heart attack each time.
When I heard the fire sirens close to me, I had to chase them close to my family home. Mom is home alone because I have to go to Chinatown almost every day. Luckily I cooked for Mom and me for 15 years very safely.
My English all gone now because I stayed home and looked after Mom for 15 years. Mom don’t know English. I became bipolar, diabetic, arthritic, eye glaucoma, hearing aid, lived in shelter to shelter for 10 years, these things happened because my siblings hurt me. I try to forget and forgive. Is not easy, I keep trying and trying and trying.
At some point in my sickness I got a little room for myself. I lived in this building where the fire alarm made noise and the people didn’t care. No one ran out, gosh only me and a neighbour friend left the building. One day last month the fire alarm rang twice in 10 minutes and only four people went out the door.
I try to understand how Canada has no big, tall, strong men to hire as firefighter. I saw a small, short one who could not even can carry his fire equipment. The second time they came back I asked him what happened and he did not care. I asked what happened, you came back again. Shorty just stood there, looked at me said nothing.
This firefighter reminder me of 9/11. Why did 200 firefighters go inside to get killed by suicide. Why and why and why? For many years now I still get mad. Who’s failed to control these two hundred fire fighters so they could live.
I am a female with not much education however I still understand, you are firefighter and save lives. You have to think faster. Why send 200 to go in for what, just save people, do not go inside to bury your own life.
I keep thinking about these two hundred firefighters. I am proud of you saving humans and saving homes, my foreign hero firefighters. I feel sad, unhappy and sorry for them that they have to listen to their boss. Why can’t anyone punish him. He killed people helping people. Big, brave and strong taking action. That is my heroes, helping people. Thank you for saving lives.
Photo credit: Anonymous
Muskoka Chairs
By Cynthia Langill
At first glance, it is simply perfect. Immediately, memories spring to my mind with glee, memories of sun-filled summer days gone by. We would sit for hours on end on the wooden Muskoka Chairs, laughing and plotting what seemed like endless glory days, spent with good friends, and new friends who had come to cottage country for the summer. These were the golden people, those who could afford the luxury of a summer home. I longed to be like them.
I looked at the picture again, feeling alarm deep in the pit of my stomach. What I saw at this next glance, was rough and murky lake waters, as if angered by the sullen skies above. A weeping willow, bent over with heaviness, foreshadowing some unpleasantness to come.
Suddenly, I was on quite another journey, remembering the darkness of the buried past, my childhood. I lived lonely, isolated and afraid.
Cottage Country is not so idyllic when the summer sun sinks away. My soul then becomes restless and unsure I dwell on the sickness that hangs over the small town I live in, that hangs so heavily over my home. The despair is in the air, like low-flying grey clouds that seem to never end.
There were no good friends back then, not a trill of happiness was to be heard, only the familiar sounds of pain and no escape from it. These were days and weeks and months of unrelenting sadness and fear.
It is as though I barely even took a breath from September through May 24th long weekend, when once again fleeting signs of the new summer season began to show themselves. Offering hope.
“Maybe this year” I thought …
Photo Credit: Christopher Westfall
Here in the hydro corridor
By Sam Burton
Iron and steel
Bones of the earth
Angular gravestones
Stretch raw arms up
Marking the ground
They were pulled from
That earth it’s
Hollow now its
Sweet marrow sucked then
Spit out a crypt
Webbed in wiry
Veins thick black with
Hot current
Pulsing to the
Winking heart of this
Town filling our
Dark mouths with its
Syrup its light
Lines
By Maria Nassiri
Lines lying horizontally. Lines standing vertically. The chronology of events, history. They cross each other and they are now diagonal. Almost like a distortion if one is accustomed to the ordinary. Without lines rectangular shapes cannot even be conceived by the mind. How marvelous they are! These fundamental principles that direct the mind towards the beginning, towards a starting time. Expressive lines, crooked or straight. How real and tangible! How reassuring is their presence! I coexist with these mathematical entities; my perception is led by their suggestive motion. Even when they are motionless, they are always moving. I see them in the human form; arms and legs crossed, arms and legs moving. The imaginary lines inside a painting, the line of reasoning of an orator’s speech. Sentences that end with a question mark, igniting yet another order of thoughts, of words lined up in a logical order, of an answer that makes sense within the context of language. Around me the sharp edges of every single book and the circular lines of the cup of coffee all resting on the smooth surface of the desk. They all accompany me in my everyday existence. Out of their significant functionality they become an integral aspect of being in the world. My dreams are filled with them and even if I try to escape through dreaming there will always be that time when I will have to wake up and where looking at the clock I will know that yet another sequence of time, of seconds and minutes has come to pass, forming in this repetitive way the journey of my life, the reality of my existence, and the concreteness of my being. This life is filled with real events too. There is more in life than just repetition it seems, but this thought is deceiving. Everything repeats itself and, in a way, I am living what Nietzsche termed “The eternal recurrence of things”. I cling onto the very individual moments of my life so I can bring myself to see that I am unique and marvelous for the very reason of being unique but even these individual moments are soaked with the decadent scent of recurrence and banality. And yet the banality and certainty of lines do not turn me off. I am once again here after having lived the lives of slaves, of kings and of deified personalities in a line of ancestors that reaches further than the civilization of the Nubians. I am the Arab, and the African and the European and I am now the individualized version of the common human spirit compartmentalized into Self and Society. I am the twenty first century woman who wonders over existence fascinated by what seems to be ordinary because she has come to realize that everything is what it is and that there is no hidden truth or some metaphysical reality to colour her existence. I am what I am just like lines are what they appear to be.
Congratulations to all our winners!
Visit a Toronto Writers Collective workshop to receive our newest Prompt of the Month
Universities, colleges, public and private education.
We know, as they say, to learn as they dictate,
leaving the minority of free thinkers with a failing grade.
Is the message, the medium we strive for, or is there
some old lesson we have forgotten in the process itself?
Is our knowledge finite with only one answer, or is the lesson
of how we learn more important?
We do we fail the youth with rigorous control?
Let us think like the eagle, who soars as it wishes.
Inspire the youth to see what others have failed to see.
Burst open the box of education so the trained teachers
can learn lessons from their youth.
What fear the establishment has of the knowledge that
an open heart can bring.
Untitled By: My-Ha
My education not as good as my brain. I been hurt and in pain. Now I am homeless. Lived in a 24-7 place. Nothing to do, eat, shit, and sleep. I cried and cried in my bed. Staff was okay. What you want, what you need they say, helping if I needed help while I lived here. Some other homeless there too, a few of them were okay to talk with, some of them, oh my gosh, very rude. I don’t talk I don’t argue I am nice and friendly with some, getting along somehow. My housing counsellors and staff workers talked to each other, and for a few months they taught me to muddle with some kind of medicine. I learn what they teach, then suddenly one day, two other homeless women like me come in and good lord they very rude with staff. I don’t know why staff is scared of these women. I can’t sleep at night, I am sick. I walked downstairs quietly, the staff guard at night was snoring too loud. I stayed on the sofa next to the staff sleeping there, and waited while she wakes up. I close my eyes for a bit then the two rude homeless women wanting something needing something can’t find the night worker. They saw the guard staff snoring, then pushing and yelling at them, they said they will report the guard, and kicked the guard who did not do her job well, lying asleep. It was three o’clock in the morning. For about 10-15 minutes the two women and then the staff asked me why don’t you go to bed, My-Ha. I say I am sick I think I catch a cold, coming down see if you have Tylenol. I see you quiet and don’t want to make noise, wake you up, I lie down here a while ago.
The staff said sorry, next time if you need something if you can’t sleep or you need to talk come down and talk to me, we talk.
So far so good, I have not cried much, have some staff here who are nice, and they know I understand cooking Chinese and Vietnamese and they liked my cooking. Staff is taking us group shopping, taking us to Value Village to buy cheap not expensive clothes and doing different activities. My counsellor takes me to a lawyer office looking for pro bono, looking for help. Think I’m going to get help, things getting smooth again. Good things and I am happy, but not for long. Suddenly one day some other young homeless girl come and take my clothes out of the wash machine and put her clothes in. I tell staff, however staff scared of her and told me I am sorry, let her do it and when she does, you put yours back please. Because staff scared to lose their job. I do what staff say. Forget and forgive.
I have moved on to another shelter. I am not dumb, I am just nice and kind with people, and help people. That is why people like me, others jealous. Three women like me, trapped me, shaped me and failed me because I am too kind, too easy to get hurt. Well what, I still starve.
Anorexia has been my home for so many years. I’ve waited, honed in on my skills to let go of anorexia.
Letting go of my anorexia is akin to my getting undone by locutionary positions. “You can do it, Fred!” The personalisation of anorexia marks a break in my life: broken bones, shallow politics, ever shifting tears. I’m no longer lost. I’ve been empowered. Anorexia has not beaten me.
The masculine metaphor of “beating” is fruitless when the coroner examines my body. But I am no longer living dead. I’ve broken free from the constraints of heterosexual monogamy. I love myself. I make love to myself. My fat undulations are a mark and naming of my prowess as a trans, fat, disabled man.
Indeed, I’m not quite human. I am difficult. The difficulty of articulating my position comes, I think, from times of repression and depression. Admittedly, I’ve learnt to let go by osmosis, like an octopus whose slinky legs are cut off by a razor. I’ve bled and bled and bled, splattered against walls and ocean floors, colonies and epistemicities…I’m not quite human.
I blend academic and technical language with unintelligibilities, such as “epistemicities”. The result, I feel, is abjection, grotesque, convoluted, messy assemblages…Difficulty is articulated by my already difficult language, diction, and prose. I’ve felt shame because of my writing. Maybe I’m too repetitive. Maybe I belong somewhere else. And belonging, as discussed today, is born of hard times.
Part II
Hard times are difficult. The locutions that come out of my mouth are mired in shame. Shame and shaming are two distinct processes that sustain difficulty. Locutions tie in with difficulty when they become utterances, named. With that in mind, guilt accompanies shame and shaming. This complex of emotions speaks to the politicisation of emotions. Difficulty can be conceptualised as the locutions that are not quite there in the present. This affective disjuncture is layered by emotions, feelings, and the messy. Mess is difficult to deal with because it is about locutions, utterances, speech acts, and namings according to spatio-temporal mappings and coordinates. Locutions can be hard. They are limited.
Part III
With my blood on paper, in print and online, I try to use laypeople terms to get my point across, convey meaning. The unintelligibility of my writing reflects histories of repression, where I do not have a voice and become voiceless, unheard. Yeah I’m abject, I’m fat, I’m disabled, I’m nonbinary. I’m something else, old, Arab, ugly. I’m part of a project with pieces around metamorphosis. Sometimes I can be a beautiful butterfly, and many times I reach that point of freedom. The liberation that I purport is actually embodied and felt by my very workings, critical intersectionalities that inform me and my vision of the world and a better life. Better life is not marked by pinkwashing, inclusion, “diversity”, and other apparently trenchant modes of expression. It is in life and death that I come to the fore as a vitality awaiting dissemination and insemination. I am a flower.
Flaunting My Flaws
By: Geoff Burke
Arguing my cause
Like bleeding wounds wrapped in tight gauze
I know everything that is wrong
I even gel it into a song
Then tragically I take the turn
All possibilities will now be burned
I accept my flaws for all to see
Brandishing a defense that allows me to flee
From the brooding gloom of responsibility
No need to listen or comprehend
Always amounting to the same end
At least I was able to hold my head high
Accusations I just deny
My excuse is simple and fun
I know my faults then point the gun
So have no fear
In guilt’s direction don’t steer
and let all the others go shed a tear
The Storm
By: Marina Burke
The jaws of my flaws
keep eating me away,
bit by bit.
I never quit.
The tail of mistakes
when I fail
is dragging along the way.
Is it really that seen?
I doubt it, it is just your dream.
I am awake –
even when I break,
I am able to survive.
As you can see I am still alive.
I channel all my imperfections
into my resurrections.
Like a Phoenix,
I am burnt and reborn,
piercing sunray
through the curtains
of my storm.
