{"id":528,"date":"2017-08-29T12:17:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T12:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/?page_id=528"},"modified":"2017-09-07T14:08:46","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T14:08:46","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/place\/wild-patience-scrolls-by-tanya-shadrick\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. (Thoreau)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Following a sudden near-death experience a decade ago, I began a slow journey: to live in my skin more vividly and to use my own end-of-life perspective \u2014 and a wide and deep reading got from long training in English Literature \u2014 to help others give voice to their song, their story.<\/p>\n

I began first by working in a self-created role as a life-story scribe<\/a> for my local hospice. At bedsides and in clients\u2019 homes, I would arrive a stranger and leave charged with what mattered most to people as they prepared to die: letters to family; stories of childhood memories; books read aloud and recorded to leave for their children; notes made on photos and other\u00a0personal items they would be leaving behind.<\/p>\n

My writing life developed out of this work (and my counter-balancing laps of Pells Pool during the same period) into themes which are unashamedly close and local: stewardship, husbandry, neighbourliness, soul-tending. My first published piece \u2014 There Are No Unsacred Places <\/a>\u2014 told the story of how I spent a year painting the railings that run beside my long street as a response to an act of vandalism.<\/p>\n

In short, I write about place<\/em>, about routine,<\/em> about\u00a0rootedness<\/em> \u2014 things to be treasured in a time when so many thousands are being torn from these\u00a0\u2014 and this is reflected in my physical practice: I am humble, down low. I write largely out of doors, close to the ground. I look up to the world.<\/p>\n

By writing in public spaces, I am also determined to use my body and education to provoke thought and conversation around the need for women to take up space. I make myself the explicit subject of the gaze and invite conversations around that: appearance versus reality. My life-writing narratives are therefore open to real-time encounters as well as the elements: my subjects are able to question me, the author, at the point of production and insert themselves into my work.<\/p>\n

As 2016\/17 writer-in-residence for Pells Pool in Sussex \u2013 the UK\u2019s oldest freshwater lido \u2013 I am\u00a0writing a\u00a0mile\u00a0of longhand on pool-length scrolls of paper. Called A Wild Patience: Laps of Longhand<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>it is a\u00a0participatory piece to which you can\u00a0gift your words in person or by email.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

[ezcol_1half]<\/p>\n

[Extracts from A Wild Patience: Laps in Longhand by Tanya Shadrick<\/a>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[\/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]<\/p>\n

[Back to Place<\/a>][\/ezcol_1half_end]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. (Thoreau)   Continue ReadingIntroduction<\/span>\u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"parent":518,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-528","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P90GIn-8w","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":812,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/528\/revisions\/812"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}