According to customs honoured in time like the tracks of carts worn into a cobbled street, Hack Hack Spurt Spurt workshops normally fall on the first Saturday of each month. However, due to the intervention of capricious Circumstance, wheeling and giggling as she conjures such mishap as to befool us every one, we didn’t have one on the first Saturday of August.
To make up for this, I suggest the following radical notion: Workshops on Two Consecutive Saturdays. Because it seems that there are five Saturdays in August, and thus we can have the belated August workshop one week, and the September one in its right and proper station of First Saturday the next weekend.
Hack Hack Spurt Spurt Workshops:
30 August 2003
6 September 2003
My house (e-mail me for the address if you don’t know)
After lunch (bring snacks)
It is also traditional for there to be some small task to focus the minds of the participants and provide direction when nothing else is happening. In previous workshops we have tackled “Extremely Short Stories” and “Very Bad Poetry”. For the August workshop, I propose the following.
In Maori oratory, there is a construction commonly used in mihi, listing the geographic and geneological connections of the speaker. To make a fictional example, one might say:
Ko Aoraki te maunga. Aoraki is the mountain.
Ko Waimakariri te awa. Waimakariri is the river.
Ko Makawhiu to waka. Makawhiu is the canoe (on which ancestors came to New Zealand)
Ko Tahu Potiki te tangata. Tahu Potiki is the man.
Ko Rehua te marae. Rehua is the marae.
Ko Ngai Tahu te iwi. Ngai Tahu are the people.
Ko Otautahi te kainga. Christchurch is my home.
Ko Hinemoa aku ingoa. My name is Hinemoa.
Depending on the context, this might include more or less detail. The repetition is powerful, and the choice of associations tells you a surprising amount about the speaker.
The task for the next workshop is to write a poem or short prose passage that uses this structure. It can be a mihi for yourself or for a fictional character, and can use the traditional elements (mountain, river, iwi…) or new ones.
I am the wheel. I am the turning. And I will lay my love around you.
Lay My Love, Brian Eno & John Cale