Kickstarting this site

A proposal

Photo by Leo Wieling on Unsplash

Yesterday I asked a good friend and colleague CeCe to look at what I’ve done here so far. Her first response was as follows:

I am wondering who your audience is? Is your audience ‘you’? Is this a snazzy home for all your words and musings, with the added benefit of being a home that is easily shared with others?

Who is my audience?

1. Initially I wanted a place to re-publish my novel The Worlds of Harriet Henderson, and to have it in both printed and audio form. In past years there have been pre-service teachers who were reading it as part of their university course, and I thought that if I published it in serial form, with audio, then (a) students wouldn’t have to pay for a copy and (b) perhaps we’d generate written reactions and questions. Maybe there’d be conversations generated between beginning and established English teachers.

2. Then I realised I could easily import all my old blog posts. I had no clear reason for doing this other than it felt like it would be fun to do. And it was fun, reliving earlier incidents and thoughts, tinkering with some of the expression, and, increasingly, seeing how certain preoccupations of mine emerged over time. The audience was now old man Steve looking back on his time in the classroom.

3. Why stop there? I’ve written theses, articles and other books. Could I bring them in too? Yes, easily. A snazzy home for all my words and musings! It felt pleasurable to be doing this … and … to be noticing how the thoughts around a mythopoetic classroom were first generated, expressed and then refined.

So, up until yesterday, I’ve thought that I was doing this just for me. At some point I’d let others know. But it was essentially an old man’s project, looking back for my own pleasure on a life as a teacher.

But CeCe didn’t just ask me about audience.

I loved loved loved reading and commenting in conversation with you and Mary. I think it was perfect for me because on the one hand it was very free, open, and without pressure or direction, while also in the back of our minds was that we were working towards something, and that something became more concrete and focused the closer we got to it. (It became the story called A Poetry Lesson)

… and what that led me to was “book club” except not actually a book club… but the idea of having a vague topic (or better perhaps, a provocation or prompt) and a very wishy washy due date, and an invitation to comment or join the conversation… with the ultimate product being who knows what; perhaps just another blog from you.

So. A thought. How about the three of us who wrote A Poetry Lesson - Mary, CeCe and I - make an audio recording of the story, then invite selected others to listen, respond and join a conversation?