The post Julespil: Christmas Lesson Fun Factory appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
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]]>Når nu du allerede har brugt timer på at overveje, hvad du mon skal finde på til sidste engelsktime inden jul. Ja, så tænker jeg, at du med fordel kan spare bekymringerne og bare downloade Mette Mølgaard Pedersens fine julespil. Så er det bare at printe pladen, finde terningerne frem og lade eleverne svare på engelskrelaterede spørgsmål fra Harry Potters gaver til Ed Sheeran hits og lidt let julegrammatik.
Her på siden kan du downloade julespillet The Rudolph Game i to versioner: En plug-and-play-pdf samt svarliste og en word-fil, hvis du vil målrette spillet til dine egne elever.
Om julespillet siger Mette selv: “Reglerne er simple. Eleverne spiller i grupper af 3-4 personer. Man slår med en terning, og den der når “Merry Christmas” først, har vundet. Når man har slået med terningen, rykker man det antal felter frem, terningen viser. Hvis man kan svare på den opgave, der er på feltet, bliver man stående. Hvis man ikke kan, rykker man tilbage til det felt, man kom fra. Hvis man lander på en Rudolf, må man hoppe hen til den næste Rudolf.
Jeg plejer at printe “pladen” i A3. Brikkerne er farvede papirstrimler, jeg skærer på papirskæreren i kopirummet, som eleverne så krøller til en kugle. Ud over det kræves blot én terning pr. gruppe.” Hvis du ikke kan få din matematik-kollega til at hoste op med en flok fysiske terninger, kan du med fordel finde en virtuel terning på nettet.
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]]>The post Creative Writing Love Poetry appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
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]]>The Poetry Project er mit forsøg på at engagere eleverne i nærlæsning, lyd, rytme, intensitet, sproglige billeder gennem mødet med engelsksproget poesi fra alle hjørner af verden. Vi læser digte – denne gang – af Kae Tempest, af Carl Sandburg, af Allen Ginsberg, Rupi Kaur, Charles Bukowski, ee cummings og Shakespeare. Vi lytter til digte, smager på digte, ser digte folde sig ud i vignetter og animationer. Og vi slutter af med at skrive og performe vores egne tekster.
Det kan godt være grænseoverskridende for eleverne at stå frem med deres egne ting, så derfor skriver jeg også selv med og går forrest i oplæsningssceancen. Her får du mit digt fra udsigten over sportspladsen og et spil Ultimate – fortolkningen må du selv stå for:-)
It looks so clean this green space encircled
By faint white lines straight as a rule
For some incomprehensible gameCardboard cutouts send tiny white and yellow lines
Flying they twist and turn from line to moon to circle
Catch the falling circumference
Run for cover for truth for distance.
Run because he tells you to run
For laughter run for the sheer joy of movementA blue car passes behind trees in the distance
Unaware of the players
The blue reds, the yellow oranges
Soon the trees will turn from green
Leave their summer dress behind to
Stand naked in the gentle rain
The car will keep its colour
Unless burned to rust
Under a pale sky it too
Naked in its corroded metal skinSomewhere children are picking
UNtitled by Morten Mølgaard Pedersen
Fragments of shells
On deserted beachfronts
Exploding like rivers
High on mars bars and protein shakes
Like you a crane
Like you a sea
Like you forever moving closer to
Last remaining glimpses
Of conscious thought
Provoking animals and dreams and kings
Charles comes in third in the race for the bottom
Mother lying in state broken – truth
Be told – like the wings of a fly
The drugs are quick
The centre cannot hold
The Rosenhergs electrocuted in queer sultry summers
What is – in fact – in a name?
Putin sounds like putain in French
The name like a whore out for money or blood or tangerine peel
It looks so clean this green space encircled
Tomorrow – perhaps – shadows will smell like cinnamon
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]]>The post An Essay on Education appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
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]]>Write a essay (900-1200 words) in which you reflect on and discuss Frederick Douglass and Sugata Mitra’s thoughts on the importance of education.
Frederick Douglass, “Blessings of Liberty and Education” (1894)
“Education means emancipation. It means light and liberty. It means the uplifting of the soul of man into the glorious light of truth, the light by which men can only be made free.”
Sugata Mitra, “Build a School in the Cloud” (2013)
“I tried to look at where did the kind of learning we do in schools, where did it come from? And you can look far back into the past, but if you look at present-day schooling the way it is, it’s quite easy to figure out where it came from. It came from about 300 years ago, and it came from the last and the biggest of the empires on this planet. [“The British Empire”] Imagine trying to run the show, trying to run the entire planet, without computers, without telephones, with data handwritten on pieces of paper, and traveling by ships. But the Victorians actually did it. What they did was amazing. They created a global computer made up of people. It’s still with us today. It’s called the bureaucratic administrative machine. In order to have that machine running, you need lots and lots of people. They made another machine to produce those people: the school. The schools would produce the people who would then become parts of the bureaucratic administrative machine. They must be identical to each other. They must know three things: They must have good handwriting, because the data is handwritten; they must be able to read; and they must be able to do multiplication, division, addition and subtraction in their head. They must be so identical that you could pick one up from New Zealand and ship them to Canada and he would be instantly functional. The Victorians were great engineers. They engineered a system that was so robust that it’s still with us today, continuously producing identical people for a machine that no longer exists. The empire is gone, so what are we doing with that design that produces these identical people, and what are we going to do next if we ever are going to do anything else with it.”
Frederick Douglass: ”The Blessings of Liberty and Education”. Political Speech, 1894. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/blessings-of-liberty-and-education/
Sugata Mitra: “Build a School in the Cloud”. Ted Talk, 2013. https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud/transcript
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]]>The post The Soul of Black Folks 1 – Music and Civil Rights appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
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]]>In 1969 or 1970, I began to re-evaluate my whole concept of what I wanted my music to say … I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realized that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people. I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world.
MArvin Gaye, Rolling Stone Magazine
Gennem de seneste års pandemi, politisk polarisering og social uro har mange nok stillet sig selvsamme spørgsmål: What’s Going On? Derfor har jeg nu lavet et forløb om music and civil rights med udgangspunkt i Marvin Gaye og dokumentarfilmen The Two Killings of Sam Cooke (2019).
The Soul of Black Folks trækker tråde fra Sam Cooke og Marvin Gaye til Malcolm X, Martin Luther King og Black Panthers. Forløbet tegner et tidsbillede af 1960ernes USA og perspektiverer soulmusikernes kritik af amerikanske myter om frihed, ligeværd og social mobilitet. Ikke mindst fokuserer på forløbet på udviklingen af black identity fra Jim Crow-stereotyper til afrofuturismens hyldest af afrikansk kultur.
Dette er den første af tre artikler om forløbet. I de næste dykker jeg mere ned i What’s Going On og begrebet afrofuturisme.
Som du nok allerede har opdaget, nikker overskriften bevidst til W.E.B Du Bois essaysamling The Souls of Black Folk fra 1903. Men det hele begyndte egentlig et andet sted. I min stue. Med dokumentarfilmen The Two Killings of Sam Cooke.
I begyndelsen af 1960erne var Sam Cooke træt af sin rolle. Han var en superstjerne med en perfekt stemme, et kønt ydre og kæmpehits i radioen. Sam Cooke var en succes – en crossover artist som bragte gospel traditioner med over i sine pophits. En kunstner som appellerede til både det sorte og hvide publikum.
Men Sam Cooke var andet og mere end en popsanger. Mordet på den 14-årige Emmet Till blev begyndelsen til en politisk vækkelse. En vækkelse som fik ham til at starte SAR Records med det formål at skabe økonomisk uafhængighed for sorte musikere. Fik ham til at nægte at spille for raceadskilte publikummer i sydstaterne. Og senere bragte ham ind i kredsen omkring Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X og The Nation of Islam.
Sam Cooke var en sort mand i splittet og raceopdelt USA. En forretningsmand med et skarpt blik for økonomisk uretfærdighed og det groteske i at hvide pladeselskaber scorede kassen på sorte kunstnere. Ikke mindst var han en mand med en platform. En mand som havde potentiale til blive ledestjerne for sorte borgerrettighedsaktivister. Netop den Black Messiah FBI-bossen J. Edgar Hoover frygtede så meget.
Netop den sorte stemme skinner tydeligt igennem på albummet Live at the Harlem Square Club, som blev indspillet i 1963, men først udsendt langt senere. Her møder vi en vredere, mere upoleret, mere sort Sam Cooke foran et ekstatisk publikum. Det er dog borgerrettighedshymnen A Change is Gonna Come som for alvor cementerer Cooke i kampen mod ulighed i USA.
Sangen blander soul, gospel og blues med politiske budskaber og en elegisk tone. Det virker næsten som om Cooke italesætter sin vilje til forandring mere end et egentligt håb. I Cookes øjne er verden så nådesløs at forandringen må komme. Sam Cooke nåede aldrig selv at se sit mesterværk på hylden i pladebutikkerne. Han blev skudt og dræbt under mystiske omstændigheder på et motel i Los Angeles i december 1964. Mere end 200.000 mennesker mødte frem til begravelsen og dødsfaldet ses som en medvirkende årsag til The Watts Rebellion (1965). A Change is Gonna Come er lige dele begravelseshymne og fremtidsvision.
Det er iøvrigt super-interessant at sammenligne teksterne til A Change is Gonna Come med Otis Reddings Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay fra 1968. De to sange taler på mange måder fra samme sted og skjuler et mørkt budskab i en smuk melodi.
I was born by the river, in a little tent
Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come (1964)
Oh, and just like the river
I’ve been running ever since
It’s been a long
A long time coming
But I know a change gonna come – Oh, yes it will
It’s been too hard living
But I’m afraid to die
‘Cause I don’t know what’s up there
Beyond the sky
It’s been a long
A long time coming
But I know a change gonna come – Oh, yes it will
I go to the movie
And I go downtown
Somebody keep telling me
Don’t hang around
It’s been a long
A long time coming
But I know, a change gonna come – Oh, yes it will
Then I go to my brother
And I say, brother, help me please
But he winds up, knockin’ me
Back down on my knees
Oh, there been times that I thought
I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I’m able, to carry on
It’s been a long
A long time coming
But I know a change gonna come – Oh, yes it will
Et af de mest iøjnefaldende aspekter ved kampen for civil rights og sort identitet er ændringen i skønhedsidealer. Billeder af doo wop grupper som The Temptations og The Supremes fra starten af 1960erne viser polerede drenge og piger med processed hair, jakkesæt og smukke aftenkjoler.
De store pladeselskaber Motown og Stax Records kører begge en strengt apolitisk linje og forsøger at appellere til det hvide publikum med et ufarligt middeklasseudtryk. Skønhedsidealet er tydeligvis hvidt: Glat hår, smalle næser og beklædning i klassiske snit. Men det er også en reaktion på Jim Crow-periodens stereotype fremstilling af sorte som uciviliserede, stupide og kriminelle.
I løbet af 1960erne kommer også skønhedsidealer under pres. En ny fornemmelse af sort identitet vinder frem og flere begynder at klæde sig i afrikansk inspirerede rober og lader håret vokse naturligt.
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]]>Et af af de bedste eksempler på at inspiration kan komme fra de særeste hjørner er den amerikanske maker Adam Savage. Videoerne fra hans cave på youtube-kanalen Tested er fantastiske — ikke kun, fordi kun de gør nørderi til en livsform, men især fordi han er en gudsbenådet historiefortæller og inspirator.
Hvad kan jeg som engelsk- og danskunderviser få ud af at se en midaldrende mand bygge movie props, hører jeg dig sige? Well, Adam Savage har udvidet mit ordforråd. Han har givet mig nye tilgange til problemløsning på mange områder og, ikke mindst, har han vist mig, at alt har en historie at fortælle – – kunsten er bare at kommunikere den historie så klart og tydeligt som muligt.
Her har jeg plukket to små videoer, der på hver sin måde handler om nysgerrighed. I den ene fortæller Adam om sine erfaringer med at begå fejl. Den anden indeholder den mest inspirerende, eklektiske og tankevækkende samling boganbefalinger, jeg har fået i lang tid. Enjoy:-)
Læs også: Make Good Art: Essay and Grammar Assignment
Læs også: A Sense of Place – Film Analysis and Methodical Point of View
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]]>The post STX A: Skriftlig Engelsk A+B Opgave appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
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]]>Du kan downloade hele opgaven med tekster, opgaveformulering og linjenumre her:
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]]>The post Undersøgende Samtaler Online appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
The post Undersøgende Samtaler Online appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
]]>Derudover vil jeg også gerne træne eleverne i det Jürgen Habermass kalder den demokratiske samtale og altså bruge klasserummet som en slags mikrokosmos af en velfungerende offentlighed. Den demokratiske samtale er baseret på lige muligheder for at komme til orde, saglighed, gensidig opmærksomhed og interesse. I den demokratiske samtale gør man sig umage med at lytte til hinanden og afsøge de bedste argumenter for og imod et givent emne, der er til diskussion.
Jeg vil gerne udvikle elevernes evne til at undersøge og udfolde et emne, en analyse eller en fortolkning gennem dialog. Målet med samtalen er derfor ikke at overtrumfe og forsvare bestemte positioner, men derimod at udforske emnet ved at bygge videre på hinandens pointer.
Man kan sige projektet sigter mod det reader response teoretikere, som Wolfgang Iser og Stanley Fish, kalder et fortolkningsfællesskab.
Læs også: Græs – Vandretur i litterære klimazoner
Metoden bygger på resultater og anbefalinger fra forskningsprojektet Kvalitet i dansk og matematik. Forskerne bag projektet giver en lang række gode indspark til det de kalder undersøgende og skabende litteraturdidaktik. Blandt andet peger de på vigtigheden af at lære eleverne at tænke sammen og skabe et trygt klasserum med plads til fælles udforskning.
”Tænk sammen” (Thinking Together) er et eksempel på et didaktisk greb, der gennem en dialogbaseret tilgang udvikler og kvalificerer elevernes faglige undersøgelser. Her undervises eleverne direkte i undersøgende samtaler med udgangspunkt i et skel mellem tre samtaletyper:
I de sidste par timer med min 1g danskklasse, har vi arbejdet med analyse og fortolkning af noveller ved hjælp af arbejdsformen “akvariet” eller “den åbne fiskebowle”. Du kan se en mere detaljeret beskrivelse af konceptet i Steen Becks indlæg om “Undervisning og samtalens kunst” på EMU.
Kort fortalt deles klassen op i en tilhørergruppe og en dialoggruppe. I dialoggruppen er der altid en tom stol, som en tilhører, der ønsker at deltage i samtalen, på et et hvert tidspunkt må sætte sig i. Så snart den tomme stol bliver besat skal en af de andre samtalepartnere forlade dialoggruppen. Øvelsen træner den demokratisk samtale i en åben form baseret på selvbestemmelse og frivillighed. Ordstyreren fungerer som vejleder og sikrer den faglige kvalitet i samtalen.
Normalt ville opgaven selvfølgelig finde sted på stole i klasserummet, men her har jeg bygget rummet op i Powerpoint. Cirkler og regler er lagt ind som baggrund, så man ikke kommer til at flytte rundt på det. Elevernes navne er lagt ind i individuelle tekstbokse, som man kan redigere og flytte rundt.
Jeg har prøvet opgaven to gange i samme klasse. Vi er i slutningen af et novelleforløb og har arbejdet med “Ringen” af Karen Blixen og Pia Juuls mikronovelle “Være med”. I den forbindelse har jeg gjort mig følgende erfaringer:
Hvis du har lyst til at prøve arbejdsformen med dine egne elever, så er skabelonen her klar til at redigere.
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]]>Den anden dag sad jeg – som så ofte før – og hyggede mig i kaninhullet Five Watt World, hvor musikeren Keith Williams taler om kreativitet, minimalisme og produktivitet. Emnet for episoden var freelancearbejde og mere specifikt The 3 reasons you’ll get work as a musician.
Keith Williams tager udgangspunkt i nogle gode råd vedr. freelancearbejde, som forfatteren Neil Gaiman gav i en commencement address på The University of the Arts i Philadelphia tilbage i 2012. Gaimans tale er sjov, let tilgængelig og måske endda relevant i forhold til karrierelæring – hvis man er en engelsklærertype der går op i den slags gøgl:-)
I denne artikel kan du både se og læse Gaimans tale. Men mindst lige så interessant kan du downloade et opgavesæt jeg har lavet baseret på Gaimans tale. Sættet kan opfattes som en slags minudgave af et eksamenssæt og er tænk til eksamenstræning i 3g. Opgaven indeholder:
Læs også: Nonfiction i engelsk: Lær dine elever at skrive med sanserne
I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education. I never graduated from any such establishment. I never even started at one. I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I’d become the writer I wanted to be was stifling.
I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn’t, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them.
Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family, who attended Universities, were cured of long ago.
Looking back, I’ve had a remarkable ride. I’m not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15 of everything I wanted to do: to write an adult novel, a children’s book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, write an episode of Doctor Who… and so on. I didn’t have a career. I just did the next thing on the list.
So I thought I’d tell you everything I wish I’d known starting out, and a few things that, looking back on it, I suppose that I did know. And that I would also give you the best piece of advice I’d ever got, which I completely failed to follow.
This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.
If you don’t know it’s impossible it’s easier to do. And because nobody’s done it before, they haven’t made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.
And that’s much harder than it sounds and, sometimes in the end, so much easier than you might imagine. Because normally, there are things you have to do before you can get to the place you want to be. I wanted to write comics and novels and stories and films, so I became a journalist, because journalists are allowed to ask questions, and to simply go and find out how the world works, and besides, to do those things I needed to write and to write well, and I was being paid to learn how to write economically, crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions, and on time.
Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you’ll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get.
Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be – an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words – was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.
And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time.
I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.
You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back.
The problems of failure are problems of discouragement, of hopelessness, of hunger. You want everything to happen and you want it now, and things go wrong. My first book – a piece of journalism I had done for the money, and which had already bought me an electric typewriter from the advance – should have been a bestseller. It should have paid me a lot of money. If the publisher hadn’t gone into involuntary liquidation between the first print run selling out and the second printing, and before any royalties could be paid, it would have done.
And I shrugged, and I still had my electric typewriter and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months, and I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.
Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. I don’t know that it’s an issue for anybody but me, but it’s true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn’t wind up getting the money, either. The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I’ve never regretted the time I spent on any of them.
The problems of failure are hard.
The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.
The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you. It’s Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened the Fraud Police.
In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don’t know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn’t consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read. And then I would go away quietly and get the kind of job where you don’t have to make things up any more.
The problems of success. They’re real, and with luck you’ll experience them. The point where you stop saying yes to everything, because now the bottles you threw in the ocean are all coming back, and have to learn to say no.
I watched my peers, and my friends, and the ones who were older than me and watch how miserable some of them were: I’d listen to them telling me that they couldn’t envisage a world where they did what they had always wanted to do any more, because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. They couldn’t go and do the things that mattered, and that they had really wanted to do; and that seemed as a big a tragedy as any problem of failure.
And after that, the biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful. There was a day when I looked up and realised that I had become someone who professionally replied to email, and who wrote as a hobby. I started answering fewer emails, and was relieved to find I was writing much more.
If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something. And the mistakes in themselves can be useful. I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the A and the O, and I thought, “Coraline looks like a real name…”
And remember that whatever discipline you are in, whether you are a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a designer, whatever you do you have one thing that’s unique. You have the ability to make art.
And for me, and for so many of the people I have known, that’s been a lifesaver. The ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.
Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.
Make good art.
I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn’t matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.
Make it on the good days too.
Do the stuff that only you can do.
The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that’s not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.
The things I’ve done that worked the best were the things I was the least certain about, the stories where I was sure they would either work, or more likely be the kinds of embarrassing failures people would gather together and talk about until the end of time. They always had that in common: looking back at them, people explain why they were inevitable successes. While I was doing them, I had no idea.
I still don’t. And where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?
And sometimes the things I did really didn’t work. There are stories of mine that have never been reprinted. Some of them never even left the house. But I learned as much from them as I did from the things that worked.
Secret knowledge is always good. And it is useful for anyone who ever plans to create art for other people, to enter a freelance world of any kind. I learned it in comics, but it applies to other fields too. And it’s this:
People get hired because, somehow, they get hired. In my case I did something which these days would be easy to check, and would get me into trouble, and when I started out, in those pre-internet days, seemed like a sensible career strategy: when I was asked by editors who I’d worked for, I lied. I listed a handful of magazines that sounded likely, and I sounded confident, and I got jobs. I then made it a point of honour to have written something for each of the magazines I’d listed to get that first job, so that I hadn’t actually lied, I’d just been chronologically challenged… You get work however you get work.
People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today’s world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They’ll forgive the lateness of the work if it’s good, and if they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as the others if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.
When I agreed to give this address, I started trying to think what the best advice I’d been given over the years was.
And it came from Stephen King twenty years ago, at the height of the success of Sandman. I was writing a comic that people loved and were taking seriously. King had liked Sandman and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, and he saw the madness, the long signing lines, all that, and his advice was this:
“This is really great. You should enjoy it.”And I didn’t. Best advice I got that I ignored.Instead I worried about it. I worried about the next deadline, the next idea, the next story. There wasn’t a moment for the next fourteen or fifteen years that I wasn’t writing something in my head, or wondering about it. And I didn’t stop and look around and go, this is really fun. I wish I’d enjoyed it more. It’s been an amazing ride. But there were parts of the ride I missed, because I was too worried about things going wrong, about what came next, to enjoy the bit I was on.
That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.
And here, on this platform, today, is one of those places. (I am enjoying myself immensely.)
Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, the luckier you get. But there is luck, and it helps.
We’re in a transitional world right now, if you’re in any kind of artistic field, because the nature of distribution is changing, the models by which creators got their work out into the world, and got to keep a roof over their heads and buy sandwiches while they did that, are all changing. I’ve talked to people at the top of the food chain in publishing, in bookselling, in all those areas, and nobody knows what the landscape will look like two years from now, let alone a decade away. The distribution channels that people had built over the last century or so are in flux for print, for visual artists, for musicians, for creative people of all kinds.
Which is, on the one hand, intimidating, and on the other, immensely liberating. The rules, the assumptions, the now-we’re supposed to’s of how you get your work seen, and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be to get your work seen. YouTube and the web (and whatever comes after YouTube and the web) can give you more people watching than television ever did. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are.
So make up your own rules
Someone asked me recently how to do something she thought was going to be difficult, in this case recording an audio book, and I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it. Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could. She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall, and she said it helped.
So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.
And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.
Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art, University of the Arts (2012)
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]]>The post Inaugural Poetry – en historie om perifere traditioner appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
The post Inaugural Poetry – en historie om perifere traditioner appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
]]>Indsættelsen af en ny præsident skaber baggrund for at reflektere over landets tilstand og sætte en retning, men giver samtidig et indblik i de værdier der præger den nye leder. De præsidenter, som har valgt en inaugural poet, har ofte været optaget af litteratur, kunst, viden og uddannelse.
Efter den tumult der har præget de sidste fire år er det ikke tilfældigt, at Amanda Gormans digt “The Hill we Climb” stjal billedet ved Joe Bidens indsættelse. Den 22-årige digter og aktivist træder direkte ind på verdensscenen med et digt, der nærmest kommer til at stå som et sindbillede på 2021.
Amanda Gormans lejlighedsdigt skriver sig selvfølgelig ind i Biden administrationens grundværdier: plurality, unity og healing. På mange blev Bidens indsættelse et åndehul fra en hverdag fyldt med monumentale udfordringer og et blik ind i en verden, hvor der stadig er håb om forsoning. På den baggrund kan man sammenligne “The Hill we Climb” med andre digte som tematiserer problemerne ved at mødes på tværs af konflikt og forskellighed.
Umiddelbart kommer jeg til at tænke på Robert Frosts “Mending Wall” med det paradoksale budskab “Good fences makes good neighbours”. Skrevet i udkanten af første verdenskrig bliver naboernes årlige ritual med at reparere muren mellem deres marker på engang symbol på adskillelse og samarbejde.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Gennem valgkampagnen har Joe Biden ikke lagt skjul på sin forkærlighed for irske digtere og flere gange citeret Seamus Heaney på sin vej rundt på the campaign trail. Det er dog Michael Longleys reaktion på våbenhvilen i den nordirske konflikt, som jeg først kommer til at tænke på i kølvandet på “The Hill we Climb”.
I digtet “Ceasefire” sætter Longley en mytologisk ramme omkring den brutale borgerkrig som gennem generationer har flået Nordirland fra hinanden og maner til forståelse og tilgivelse gennem billedet af mødet mellem Akilles og Priamos – – drabsmanden og offerets far.
I
Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and
Wept with him until their sadness filled the building.II
Taking Hector’s corpse into his own hands Achilles
Made sure it was washed and, for the old king’s sake,
Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry
Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.III
When they had eaten together, it pleased them both
To stare at each other’s beauty as lovers might,
Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still
And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:IV
Michael Longley, Ceasefire (1998)
‘I get down on my knees and do what must be done
And kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.’
Jeg har i det følgende plukket lidt eksempler til et forløb om Inaugural Poetry. Hvis du vil mere i dybden vil jeg klart anbefale at dykke ned i The Academy of American Poets‘ website med historisk baggrund, tekster og plug-and-play lesson plans. Hvis du vil nøjes med at arbejde med Amanda Gorman, kan jeg anbefale disse lektionsplaner og opgaver fra PBS.
When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade.
We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken,
but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
This effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith, we trust,
for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared it at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour,
but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked, ‘How could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?’ now we assert, ‘How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be:
A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright.So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
Recited at the inauguration of Joe Biden in 2021
With every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the west.
We will rise from the wind-swept north-east where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country,
our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
The land was ours before we were the land’s
recited at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she will become.
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling wordsArmed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers—desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours—your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.Here, on the pulse of this new day
Recited at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, and into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning.
One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello / shalom,
buon giorno / howdy / namaste / or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
Recited at the INauguration of Barack Obama in 2013
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together
Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,praise song for walking forward in that light.
Recited at the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009
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]]>The post True Crime – Storyboard your Stylistic Analysis appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
The post True Crime – Storyboard your Stylistic Analysis appeared first on INKSHED | DK.
]]>Det er min oplevelse af eleverne tit har svært ved at integrere stilistisk analyse i deres skriftlige opgaver. Derfor har jeg lavet en visualiseringsøvelse med netop det fokus i arbejdet med Eileen McNamara’s lille true crime-perle “I still have no answer” fra The Boston Globe.
Artiklen er en personlig og nært sanset beskrivelse af mordet på en ung kvinde i McNamara’s opgang og fungerer glimrende som introduktion til genretræk ved literary nonfiction og stilistisk analyse.
En vigtig del af en stilistisk analyse er at fokusere på de forskelle der gør en forskel. For at hjælpe eleverne på vej har jeg lavet en øvelse som går ud på at visualisere et kort afsnit fra teksten ved hjælp af et storybard. De fleste storyboards er tegnede, men for at gøre opgaven nemmere skal eleverne i stedet finde billeder på nettet og bruge dem til at bygge deres visuelle version af scenen. Alternativt kan de bruge værktøjet Storyboard That, som Eva Pors fra 111variation.dk har skrevet om her.
Som kan se nedenfor er dette afsnit præget kaos, vold, farver, forvirring samt spring i tid, rum og synsvinkel. Alt sammen formidlet vha. en collage teknik og korte/ufuldstændige sætninger. Gennem sin fortælleteknik bringer McNamara direkte ind i mordnattens rædsler.
Storyboard-opgaven tvinger eleverne til at nærlæse afsnittet og omsætte forfatterens stilistiske valg til billeder og de individuelle beskæringer, som formidler historien.
Work in Groups of Four
Make a powerpoint with your analysis of Eileen McNamara’s column “I Still have no answer”. You will be asked to present your results in the next English lesson.
Tasks
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