“Chalk to the south, clay to the north. Sun to the south, rain to the north. Woods to the south, fields to the north. The ridge of the South Downs divides the world into realms of weather, light and color. Underfoot, the track – of fine chalk, pure enough to write with – was glossy with recent rain. Ahead of me, it ran brightly over the hills, dipping from sight before looping back up again.” - Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
PROGRAM: This three week program combines writing (chalking) with hiking (walking) and visits to local places of interest, including the home of Virginia Woolf, Ashdown Forest (the inspiration for A.A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood), the sky scraping Seven Sisters (a shooting location in Goblet of Fire), Arundel Castle, The Mermaid Inn (the most haunted inn in England), and the Long Man of Wilmington (which Neil Gaiman interpreted as the guardian of the gate to Faerie in his Sandman series). We'll also attend an event at the Charleston Literary Festival, a play at the Globe Theatre in London, and an intimate sea shanty "concert" by the Wellington Wailers at a 200-year-old bayside pub. Plus a haunted priory, a town settled by smugglers, Sherlock Holmes' retirement cottage, a ghost walk of the Lanes (Brighton's historic haunted quarter), and a tour of the eclectic houseboats/floating sculptures that populate "the wackiest street in Britain."
LOCATION: Lewes is a hilly sixth century Saxon village with half beam bookshops, medieval streets, and an imposing Norman castle, wedged between the chalk cliffs of the Downs, near Brighton (recently named the world's most hipster city, beating out Berlin & Brooklyn) on the south coast of England. Local attractions additionally include a former windmill owned by Virginia Woolf, the ruins of the once mighty Priory of St. Pancras, the picturesque cobblestoned twittens (a Sussex word for alleyway), and Harvey's Brewery, which still delivers ale through the streets of Lewes by horse and cart. But the great appeal of Lewes lies in its location; dozens of spectacular walks depart from its environs.
ACADEMICS: While in Lewes, you'll create, workshop, and declaim written work - ostensibly inspired by your experience(s) in England: the places you visit, the legends you hear, the people you meet - culminating in public reading attended by locals and live streamed for friends and family back home. Your classrooms will be the eclectic cafes and pubs of Cliffe High street. Fables surround the South Downs – black dogs, standing stones, witches, sunken bells, treasure, ghosts, giants, dragons, faeries, King Arthur and the Devil - and while your work may take the form of poetry, non-fiction or fiction (and fall into any genre), we encourage you to incorporate the local lore. The best of your writing will be combined in a final portfolio, due a few weeks after you return, on June 29th.
REQUIREMENTS & GRADE DISTRIBUTION:
Participation and attendance: 75%.
You will be expected to appear in a timely manner for all excursions, group activities, and meetings. In between planned events you will dedicate a substantial amount of time to your writing.
Final Portfolio: 25%.
Your final portfolio will consist of assorted prose pieces (fiction and/or non-fiction) and/or poems. Proposed page count soon. To be e-mailed to Alex Dawson at agd2@english.rutgers.edu by midnight of Thurs. June 29. Conferences (Zoom or in-person) will be scheduled to discuss your portfolio in the days/weeks after its submission.