Writing gains power from place.
Last month, John Simmons published a new volume of poetry inspired by the Spanish city of Seville. He speaks more about the collection here, but it inspired me.
John writes:
Writing gains a lot of power and attraction from close association with a place. It’s hard to imagine what William Faulkner would have written if he hadn’t placed so much of his writing in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. Or Elena Ferrante without Naples, William Wordsworth without the Lake District, Katherine Mansfield without her exiled memories of New Zealand. With these writers, place is so much embedded in the writing that it almost becomes a character – more than just a scenic backdrop.
For this month’s Mini-Project, we are inviting 26ers to write a piece rooted deeply in a single place – real or imagined, grand or quaint – where the setting is the focus.
The aim? To explore how place shapes ourselves and our writing – and to discover how writing about somewhere can redefine our relationship with it:
Be a writer, not just a tourist. You’ll find the words you write make the places visited much more memorable.
(John’s piece in full)
The Challenge
Create a piece of writing (poem or prose, any length) focussed on “place” – perhaps as the centre of a short narrative, perhaps as a description in its own right. But the setting must feel centred, alive, and vivid.
The place could be:
- A city street
- A childhood bedroom
- A train station
- A coastline
- A market at dusk
- A fictional town
- A single building
- Even a corner of a garden
But wherever it is, let it breathe. Rather than writing about a place, try writing from inside it.
Be a flâneur with a mission.
Walk it (literally or in memory).
Open your senses.
Notice what others might miss.
Capture fragments – colours, textures, memories, tensions.
Optional Constraint (for the brave)
If you choose, you might:
- Set your piece in exactly 26 sentences;
- Write a 26-line poem or a Centena (62 words, the first and last 3 the same);
- Or my favourite: limit yourself to just 26 minutes of writing.
Just let me know what (if any) constraint you applied, and send your scribblings to max@whiteweavearts.co.uk by the evening of Sunday 22 March.
– Max Parfitt
If you haven’t yet, take a look at last month’s Mini-Project based around Univocal Poems. Or remember last year’s Postcodes Mini-Project, treading on some similar ground.