A highlight of the Sharjah International Book Fair was the creative writing workshop that my Sahar Muradi, Lisa Dempster and I ran at a lovely room at the fair itself (held at the Sharjah Expo Center).
We had some writing prompts:
“I remember…”
“The first time I…”
and finally “I am…” followed by descriptions using the 5 senses.
We gave everyone 3 minutes to free write.
@mohannad_adnan and @arabvoicesspeak writing
The results were:
@hamna Hamna Ahmed
‘I remember my 1st accident. I crashed the car and nearly ran *cringe*
@ArtLoversME Sarah
my 3min write up:’The first time I cry was the first time I fly|out of my mothers womb into a brighten room.How strange the change’
You can find her full poem Here
@MujeebJaihoon Mujeeb Jaihoon
I remember my own poem My mother my paradise which I wrote for my mom.
Of course, when technology is involved, there is always a glitch as in this case:
@musafirs Azim : something went wrong my tweets from #shjibf @ writing wrokshop did not come on line.. :(
He posted the entire poem, rather than 140 characters of it on his blog (quite clever).
@AlaskaMongolia Maryam Ismail also shared her vibrant poetry. Turns out Maryam also knew Suheir Hammad, which was a lovely connection.
Lovely writers: @yjraissati Yasmina Jraissati who is an agent for Arabic literature, and @ArabVoicesSpeak Samar Jarrah was generous to tweet our constellation of voices. Thank you!
my own chicken-scratch responses to the writing prompts
