Professor Dr Robyn Rowland (retired academic) is a dual Irish-Australian writer/poet, residing in both countries. She has been teaching and writing in Turkey since 2009 and has given many workshops in Turkey as well as bi-lingual readings with her translator Professor Dr Mehmet Ali Çelikel. She has been publishing for over 45 years and has 10 books of poetry, as well as 3 academic titles. Previous to early retirement in 1996 due to breast cancer and burnout, Professor Rowland was inaugural Head of the School of Social Inquiry with 10 areas of study, 5 campuses and Head of the Australian Women’s Research Centre at Deakin University. She was made an Officer in the Order of Australia by the Australian Government in 1996 for national and international contributions to tertiary education and women’s health. Since leaving academia, Dr Rowland reads and teaches in many countries.
The Workshop
This structured workshop is appropriate for established and early writers; poets and prose writers.
Time Travelling. Archaeology and the writing dig.
The processes of writing are often like an archaeological dig and use similar processes: travelling through time and place; turning over artefacts, considering stratification, piecing together fragments, blowing away the dust of memory. Narratives emerge in archaeology to explain the material finds and so too is creative writing a project of story telling. This workshop will consider some writers’ use of archaeology to create a present message or memory. We will also consider some specific finds e.g the bog bodies and other finds, the Peruvian finds, Troy and the Minoan civilization. Participants will be encouraged to begin with a specific find/place and generate their own history/ narrative into it and weave their own ‘find’ out of it.
Each participant is given notes to keep which relate to the topic of the workshop, as well as copies of Robyn’s and other works which exemplify the theme. Each part of the workshop involves a talk, a guided meditative moment encouraging participants to attend to the nature of their piece of writing, followed by writing towards the topic. Robyn will then give feedback for each participant in terms of the aim of the workshop.
Website: www.robynrowland.com