Presenting

Teaching Children Creative Writing
The 10th International Conference of the Book
June 30th – July 1st, 2012; Barcelona, Spain.

The aim of this workshop is to try out different ways to enrich the creative writing lesson in fiction and poetry when teaching young children between the ages of 7 and 16. The audience will participate in sample exercises to illustrate the various methods that I have found effective in my own experience, and we will have a discussion about the implication of teaching these kinds of writing to young children, and the benefits that fostering this creativity can have on other areas of learning.
I will be speaking about experiences teaching workshops with the DEEP Center for literacy, a non-profit writing program that is run out of Savannah, as well as my experiences as a freelance writing teacher to schools in Edinburgh, UK. We will discuss the areas of difficulty in trying to encourage producing and sharing work, and why working on creative writing with children can also be particularly rewarding.

Postgraduate Student, Creative Writing, Specialisation in Poetry, Edinburgh University
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

This paper is a discussion of Heidegger’s denial of Platonic metaphor, and explores the defense he gives against the detriment of metaphor. Because Heidegger values poetry and language so highly, I disagree with his traditional treatment of metaphor, and offer an alternative perspective. I am continuing to edit and include a section detailing the weak points in the article “Metaphor as Hermeneutic” by Sheehan, and also Paul Ricoeur’s “Metaphor and the central problem of hermeneutics.” They will be included before the discussion of Lockward’s poem. Sheehan and Ricoeur, among others, provide intelligent and interesting discourses on interpretation and use of metaphor, but I feel their theses do not extend far enough to encompass the many facets of metaphor.