Château Ventenac

Posts Tagged ‘writing courses’

Chateau Ventenac Writing Courses is proud to be able to bring you a new poem from one of our regular tutors, Sean O’Brien.

From his new collection of poems due to be published next year, this poem was written after his stay at Chateau Ventenac in March 2010 and I’d like to thank him for his generosity in allowing me to reproduce it here.

Sean will be back at Chateau Ventenac  in April 2011 to run a poetry writing course “About Time”. For details see the Chateau Ventenac Writing Courses website at www.chateauventenac.com/courses

A note from Sean

‘I was teaching a course at the Chateau in April 2010, and as usual, was very much enjoying it despite knowing that at any time I might receive news of the death of my close friend and mentor, the poet Peter Porter, who had been gravely ill when I’d last seen him shortly before leaving England. It was still a blow, on 23 April, when I received the phone call telling me he’d died. Peter had himself visited Ventenac, years before Julia began offering courses here, and had remembered it clearly. If you have been fortunate enough to come here you may recognize some of the places and people that found their way into the poem I subsequently wrote.’

Leavetaking

In memory of Peter Porter
 

In a draughty terrace bar

Beside the cave at Chateau Ventenac,

And lapped by the green Midi canal,

I take my leave, old friend,

By raising une pression and not

The Minervois that you would recommend.

Bad news prefers its poison cold and long.

The news has not improved so far -

So, keep the decent bottle in the rack

For later, for the ‘decent interval’

That death like a bureaucracy requires.
 

Or maybe neck it in the midnight heat

Up at the house when everyone’s in bed,

At one end of the huge white tablecloth,

At which a Nazi colonel also sat

To sample the warm south

While waiting for the war to end -

The kind of fact you would absorb

For later, but there is no later now.

Flute-playing psychopaths all must

Like cats and poets come to dust,

But I will not be reconciled.
 

The evening boats slide in,

Last autumn’s leaves still piled

Along their guttering and in the seats

Of plastic chairs left out on deck

In token of a former merriment

In which I am required to believe

When the patron, a rugby star

From some time back, limps past

To put another freezing glass beside the last,

Then fire the oven up with grubbed-up vines

And stand admiring its crimson speech

As though like alcohol it were

A kind of poetry. My friend,

Is there sufficient detail for you yet?

You’d know much faster than I ever could

The point at which the orchestration starts

And evening is converted into art.
 

La patronne with her brutal crop

And wide-girl suit comes out

To criticize the styling of the blaze.

The grinning barman comes by bicycle

And finds their bickering, the bar,

The voices from the dim canal, the flicker

Of the bunting’s spectral tricolores

A stage to serve his wordless drollery:

These are perhaps our characters, but where’s

The crowd to fill the choruses

Of black-edged pastoral?

The world, you’d say, exists

Not to be understood

But to demand conviction. I assent,

As if it matters, and the dancers have arrived,

Cool, pink-pastelled blondes who

In another life have raised

A parapluie at Cherbourg, squired

By lupine George Chakirises in black.
 

This is the world, or part of it.

They do not think themselves Shakespearean,

Although you might, were we to sit

Beside the water here, me with une pression

And you among the quiet notes you will transform

Into a poem in the high nine hundreds.

I have not learned your lesson yet.

Work is good, like love and company,

But these so-courteous deaths, who sweep

Their maidens up and down the shore

In perfect silence on their light fantastic feet

(When did the music stop?), insist

That they are quite another thing,

Sent from a place less beautiful than this

But just as carefully designed,

The shade beyond the trees and the canal,

Where evening ends, and songs likewise,

And there is no one left to sing.
 

Sean O’Brien

from November

(Picador, 2011)

What a great week!

The beginning of November saw eight writers gather at Chateau Ventenac to work with the novelist Patrick Gale. Patrick Gale has written fourteen novels, the thirteenth of which, Notes from an Exhibition, was the Independent Booksellers’ Association Adult Book of 2008 and a Richard and Judy Book Club selection. His latest publication is Gentleman’s Relish, his second collection of short stories. He’s a book reviewer for the Independent and guest critic on BBC Radio 4’s weekly arts magazine, Saturday Review and regularly teaches for the Arvon Foundation.

The title of this week was “Fiction for the Fearful and it was a course aimed at  writers who were just starting out with their writing or those who had  become a bit stuck. Some had always wanted to write a novel but didn’t know where to start? Others had loved writing stories at school but somehow lost the confidence to continue? One or two were experienced writers who felt their work needed new direction.

Using a mixture of writing exercises and reading groups Patrick Gale  helped them to reconnect with their imagination and find the courage to take up their pens again. The mornings were spent working as a group but every student had the opportunity to take one afternoon tutorial alone with Patrick. Patrick was extremely generous with his time and everyone felt they had benefitted from his incisive view.

After dinner the evenings were spent on more group exercises, games and readings. On the last night every student read a short story that they had written during the week and most impressive they all were! Thank you all for allowing me and the helpers to join you – we were  honoured to be included and thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

Mid way through the week we all took a trip to the Medeival City of Carcassonne…a chance to stimulate the imagination…and to eat out  and sample such local delights as Cassoulet or Duck and frites!!

After the course Patrick Gale wrote ” I had such a stimulating week, even though I was the one meant to be doing the stimulating, and with my enthusiasm for writing refreshed. The students were a really interesting group of people – far more international that a typical Arvon group. The chateau is the perfect setting for writing courses – with plenty of attractive corners around both house and garden in which students can squirrel themselves away and the setting is beautiful without being distractingly so. The food was so delicious, I’m sure I put on weight.”

Patrick will be busy writing his next novel next year but has promised to come back to Ventenac in 2012. Reserve your place  soon by emailing Julia!!