::mslexia workshops::

The Blank Page #14
a writing workshop with Margaret Wilkinson

THEME: BABIES

INTRODUCTION

BABIES? What do we know about babies? Not every woman has had first-hand experience with babies. But every woman was a baby herself, once upon a time.

Attempting, sometimes failing, to see right back to the very dawn of memory puts our writing selves in touch with something dreamlike and strange. Usually all we can remember are impressions. Often there is one strong image, a single significant object or image that supports us, like Virginia Woolf’s ‘base’ that life stands on. For me it is the sound of a doorbell. What was your first memory? Don’t worry if you don’t know. As you write you might discover a memory, coax one to the surface, or construct one from impressions.

'A Sketch of the Past’ from Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being

The first memory

This was of red and purple flowers on a black ground – my mother’s dress; and she was sitting either in a train or in an omnibus, and I was on her lap. I therefore saw the flowers she was wearing very close; and can still see the purple and red and blue. I think, against black; they must have been anemones... Perhaps we were going to St Ives; more probably from the light it must have been evening, we were coming back to London. But it is more convenient artistically to suppose that we were going to St Ives, for that will lead to my other memory, which also seems to be my first memory, and in fact is the most important of all my memories. If life has a base it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without a doubt stands upon this memory. It is of lying half asleep, half awake, in the bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one, two, behind a yellow blind. It is of hearing the blind draw its little acorn across the floor as the wind blew the blind out ...

If I were a painter I should paint these first impressions in pale yellow, silver and green…I should make a picture that was globular, semi-transparent. I should make a picture of curved petals; of shells; of things that were semi transparent. I should make curved shapes showing the light through, but not giving a clear outline. Everything would be large and dim.

EXERCISES

#1
Impressions
‘This was of red and purple flowers on a black ground – my mother’s dress;’
Write impressionistically about the first moment in time you can recall. Write in the present tense.

• ‘Perhaps we were going to St Ives…’
Don’t worry if the memory is hazy. Write about that, or about not remembering at all.

• ‘…hearing the waves breaking, one, two…’
Imagine what you could see, hear, smell, taste, touch. Be in the moment of your first memory.

• ‘If I were a painter, I should paint these first impressions in pale yellow.’

Imagine a painting of your first memory. Describe this painting.

• ‘But it is more convenient artistically to suppose that we were going to St Ives…’

Don’t be afraid to change the facts or make things up. For example, you might run together a memory from your infancy and a memory from your adolescence. When I was a teenager, I started to wear glasses. I might write about a baby who wore glasses. Or I might take an event from my childhood and set it in the middle ages; or place I live today.

#2
Viewpoint
• Write a diary entry from the viewpoint of yourself as a baby.

• Describe an ordinary place, an occasion, or a time of day from a baby’s point of view. But do not reveal you’re a baby.
A trip to the beach; A party; Morning; The front room; Midnight.

• Still writing from the point of view of yourself as a baby, answer the following questions: What do you think the moon is? What’s a mirror? A telephone? A spoon? A door? A wristwatch? A shadow? A kiss?

#3
Old Photographs
• Itemise everything in a photograph of yourself as a baby, every person, object, every detail. See if you can get as many as 20 items on a list. Use the most precise language you can. Does this list lead you into a poem?

• Ask the photograph six questions. Can any of these questions structure a poem? Form a repeated line?

#4
Word Play
• In four or five sentences only, describe yourself as a baby. Then do the same, describing yourself as an adult. Use present tense. I chose a simple physical description:

‘I am/a skinny baby. I have/big eyes/like marbles/and a pram with/wooden side panels/ resembling a car. There are/a crowd/of adults always hanging around me. My mother, however, is/absent.’

‘The first thing you would notice about me is/ my cat’s-eye glasses. Sometimes there is/a tense expression/on my face. My neck is/ getting scrawny. I wear/very simple clothes. Like a person in a strict religious order/ I won’t wear/anything that isn’t/black, beige, white or grey.’

• Cut up these sentences and combine, make wonderful new images and write on:

My neck is a skinny baby.
I wear big eyes.
The first thing you would notice about me is a skinny baby.
My mother is black, beige, white or grey.
I wear wooden side panels on my face.
My pram is getting scrawny, tense.
A crowd of adults from a strict religious order notice me.
My baby wears eyeglasses.
My marble baby won’t wear anything.
My tense grey mother is getting into a car.