In October I was lucky enough to participate in the ‘Enter Text’ Residency Programme from Arteles Creative Centre, Finland. Arteles is one of the largest and most international residency centers in Scandinavia and pride themselves on providing the freedom to be creative. A month living with twelve other writers and artists in an old house in the woods, was the most wonderful experience. It really did give me the permission to create, to focus on my writing, to talk and live and breathe art and let go of the rest of the real world.
The beauty of the Finnish forest, the company of wonderful and generous artists, and most importantly the time and the headspace just to write were incredibly valuable. Not to mention the glory of the northern lights, and the quiet cold of the first snow of the season.
I’ve written more about what I worked on at the Arteles facebook post below. You can see mine and the work of other artists in their catalogue, here.
While completing my Masters I was lucky enough to be introduced to Creative Non-fiction, a genre I hadn’t really heard of before but quickly discovered I absolutely loved. One of our assignments was to write a personal essay inspired by an object. I chose a human skull (of course), and started writing about donating your body to science, the Indian bone trade, and the human rituals around death. But personal essays are personal, you know, so I wasn’t only writing about that. It was also an essay on how to cope when your life falls apart, on what it feels like to be disassociated from a part of yourself, and the human rituals around the death of relationships.
