2011 A Great CREATIVE Year!

Meg Torwl reading July 2011 at the SFU Writing and Publishing Graduation with Trish Webb, Karen Lee

2011 was a good year for me creatively! I got to work or exhibit in several disciplines - writing, performance, audio, video, new media and curate.

I wrote an audio Podplay in a workshop with Jan Derbyshire with Neworld Theatre. About dealing with cancer while going to university. How depression holds hands with illness behind your back and tries to convince you every day is the same. Meanwhile your creativity tries to see the sun and remember everyday is new and full of possibility - even as Fukushima burns.

Two of my films screened. Act Your Age!? with the Generations Project Local Docs Series. Where have all the lesbians gone? with an Out On Screen Retrospective Vancouver Visionaries screening.

I curated and exhibited a new media exhibition in Sechelt for  a month - PORTAL/PORTAGE. A wonderful collaboration with meditations on nature with three other women artists whose work I admire very much, Claudia Medina-Culos, Lilianna Kleiner and Diane Tanchak. With the Sunshine Coast Arts Council.

I completed The Writers Studio 2011 at Simon Fraser University, with the wonderful Poetry and Lyric Prose mentor Jen Currin. Such a great group of fellow students too! My work grew and expanded so much in the fecund environment! I submitted 60+ pages for work-shopping and polished  and shaped my final manuscript of 25 pages for deadline, with the help of Betsy Warland’s excellent Minding Your Manuscript class. My final poetry manuscript is a narrative arc through an intimate relationship, illness, to life transitions of all types. There are three inter-related sections 1. The Synesthete and the Kinesthete (intimate relationships, aging, illness). 2. The Autistic Rheumatologist (disability, illness) 3. Transit of Venus (things thought while traveling – family, disability, spirituality, bliss, happiness, mortality).

I took a fabulous elective paper at SFU - The Poems Story and Silence – with Betsy Warland, the out-going Program Director of the Writers Studio. I wanted to write about a magical childhood encounter with a flock of moths, and ended up writing a new suite of 13 poems on the joys and tensions of the great NZ extended family summer holiday! The diversity and talent of the other women in the class was inspiring when we all gave a 10 minute presentation at the last class, each of us with visual elements to our work. It is always wondrous as a mentor what Betsy is able to draw out of us.

I read my poetry at 5 public reading events, and had 9 poems accepted for publication. With Emerge, The Writers Caravan, Enpipe and The Wild Weathers.

I am looking forward to what 2012 brings, so far in the works seeking a publisher for a poetry book, a collaborative performance commission from Calgary, a Mentorship from NZ, and possibly a retrospective exhibition.

Namaste and gratitude.