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Ekphrastic Practices in CatalysingCreative Writing in Undergraduate ESLClassroomsAsma Mansoora

a Department of English, International Islamic University,Islamabad, PakistanPublished online: 15 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Asma Mansoor (2014): Ekphrastic Practices in Catalysing Creative Writing inUndergraduate ESL Classrooms, New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theoryof Creative Writing, DOI: 10.1080/14790726.2014.904887

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Ekphrastic Practices in CatalysingCreative Writing in Undergraduate ESLClassrooms

Asma MansoorDepartment of English, International Islamic University, Islamabad,Pakistan

(Received 18 June 2013; accepted 7 March 2014)

Teaching creative writing to second language learners demands a more enterprisingapproach from the teachers, since in such an environment, there are various literary,social, cultural, as well as historical stimuli (both local and foreign) that can beengaged creatively in a creative writing classroom. Owing to the vast range of itsmeanings, ekphrasis, in this context, can serve as a means of integrating texts andmixed media in ESL creative writing practices. However, my study does not merelystop at engaging ekphrasis in an ESL creative writing class, it also brings within itsambit the impact of the native culture of the ESL writers. This study, therefore,presents activities that incorporate ekphrasis and subsequently analyses the variousnativisation patterns that are engendered in the compositions of the ESL creativewriters.

Keywords: visual media, literary texts, creative writing, ESL, ekphrasis

IntroductionIn countries like Pakistan, where English is a second language, the problems

encountered by a creative writing teacher are manifold in the context of guidingundergraduate ESL creative writers. From first language interference to culturalissues, for a Pakistani student, creative writing in the target language becomes asort of obstacle course in which innumerable hurdles hinder the smoothverbalisation of latent ideas and thoughts. In order to deal with the encum-brances of grammar andweak expression etc., a creative writing teacher needs todevise unique means to channelise the interest of the students and to help themovercome any inherent reticence when it comes to their engagement withEnglish as a second language. These means may include engaging variousactivities based on visual literacy as well as engaging literary texts in a creativewriting classroom. These activities can be based upon an ekphrastic approachtowards stimulating their writing skills.

In the context of my study, ekphrasis has not been confined to the definitionprovided by Heffernan, i.e., it is ‘the verbal representation of graphic representation’(1991, 299 emphasis in original). Rather, my study has taken on board thepost-modern notion of a text which places both a written text and a graphic

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

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representation within the category of a ‘text’ since both incorporate multiplesemiotic forms in the process of signification, creating, in Goldhill’s terms, ‘arich archive of interpretation’ (2007, 2). It is for this reason that my study hasplaced both literary texts and visual media for engaging in an ‘ekphrasticencounter’ (Cunningham 2007, 58), owing to the fact that a reading or seeing ofa literary or a visual artefact engages the act of interpretation through a ‘criticalgaze’ (Goldhill 2007, 2) which, in turn, involves a ‘synaesthetic miscegenating,overlapping, blurring’ (Cunningham 2007, 57). These processes can be taken astep further in an ESL creative writing class in the creation of new composi-tions since ekphrasis permits the creation of images through different mediaand also to grant a voice to that which is absent or mute.

In addition, both literary texts and the visual media have boundaries thatcan be mediated, allowing a creative osmosis between their domains as literarytexts have been modified into movies and vice versa. Keeping this form ofosmosis in mind, a creative writing instructor can play with the resourcesprovided by both literary texts and the visual media in a creative writingclassroom in countries where English is a second language. In addition, animportant notion that needs to be kept in mind is that these novice creativewriters are bilingual, hence their ‘thought-patterns’ (Kachru 1986, 160), whichare embedded within their native culture, also need to be taken into accountwhile devising the activities. Since ‘language is a “machine” that generates, andas a result constitutes the real world’ (Jorgenson and Phillips 2002, 9) andaccording to Whorf, ‘we dissect nature along lines laid down by our nativelanguage’ (1956, 213), hence a bilingual creative writer’s modes of thinking areprofoundly influenced by his local culture and native modes of expression.Hence Benjamin Whorf adds:

the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of eachlanguage is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas butrather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide for theindividual’s mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for hissynthesis of his mental stock in trade. (1956, 212)

This plays an active part in not only shaping their responses and understand-ing of the target language, but also modifies the target language as the examplesgiven in the ensuing argument highlights. In short, when ESL students engagewith foreign literary texts and media, their native language, its normative rulesof grammar and syntax as well as their own understanding of their local cultureinfluences their engagement with the target language.

Theoretical FrameworkVisual media and literary texts may be used as effective tools in an ESL

creative writing classroom. While literature displays the ‘picture-makingcapacity of words’ (Krieger 1992, 1) the visual media use the language ofpictures to participate in the process of meaning-making. These ‘aesthetic signs’(Krieger 1992, 4) can be in the form of words as are found within written texts, ormay be articulated through the verbal medium as inmovies, advertisements, etc.

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According to Joan Krieger, the relationship between words and pictures andtheir interchangeability remains a complicated issue. Nevertheless, she writes, alanguage does have the ‘capacity … to do the work of the visual sign’ (1992, 4).Verbal arts have shared characteristics as the ‘plastic arts’ (Krieger 1992, 4).However, the notion of ‘ut picture poesis’ (Krieger 1992, 4 italics in original)cannot be encompassed as one theoretical issue, but a premise provided byKreiger gains significance in this study. Both verbal and visual signs are‘aesthetic signs’ (Krieger 1992, 4) that have an arbitrary and conventionalcharacteristic; hence, the process of their interpretation is primarily a ‘mediatedactivity’ (Krieger 1992, 4). Since these do not have fixed boundaries, a reader/viewer is granted autonomy not only in interpreting those signs in theirrespective contexts but also in recasting them in different contexts which canbe based upon their personal or collective experiences. Hence, the mediationactivity involved in interpretation can be taken a step further in an ESL creativewriting classroom to synthesise new ideas. However, in this context, bilingual-ism and nativisation techniques also become an added feature, since the nativemilieu comes to reflect upon the acts of mediation, interpretation and synthesisthrough ekphrastic practices. As it is, the written script has provided theframework for theatrical performances throughout history. Hence, wordscollimate with other means of signification in various visual media to createmeanings, such as with music, settings, gestures, facial expressions of the actors,etc. Therefore, both literary texts and the visual media perform their specificfunctions as a concatenation of various signifiers, which derive their meanings interms of other signs.

In an ESL context such as in Pakistan, one needs to analyse the creativecompositions produced by the Pakistani students from the angle of bilingualcreativity. The rationale behind this approach has been provided by BrajKachru in the following terms:

In contact literature, the bilingual’s creativity introduces a nativizedthought-process […] which does not conform to the recognized canons ofdiscourse types, text design, stylistic conventions and traditional thematicrange of the English language, as viewed from the major Judaic-Christians traditions of literary and linguistic creativity.The linguistic realization of the underlying traditions and thoughtprocesses for a bilingual may entail a transfer of discoursal patternsform one’s other (perhaps more dominant) linguistic code (s) and culturaland literary traditions. (1986, 160)

What gains significance here is that when ESL students are exposed toliterary compositions produced in England or the USA, they do not passivelyabsorb and assimilate the cultural and linguistic patterns of the target culture.As a matter of fact, their ‘nativized thought process’ (Kachru 1986, 160) bringstheir native linguistic and cultural resources to not only participate in theprocess of hermeneutics, but in the process of synthesising new compositionsas they use Western literary texts and visual media in their creative writingclasses. Moreover, owing to their colonial associations with Western literature

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in countries like India and Pakistan, the language remains indelible imprintedon their cultural and social canvas. In Pakistan, for example, the students areexposed to British and American literature through their curricula throughouttheir educational careers. Hence, Western literature remains a readily availableresource for most teachers to utilise in a creative writing classroom throughekphrastic practices.

In this process, however, the meanings that these ESL students create intheir writings align themselves along their own cultural milieu, as they definethemselves in connection with the multi-cultural literary works and visualmedia to which they are exposed in their creative writing classroom. Hence,the meanings they create move across cultural boundaries, revealing their owncultural patterns and indigenous thought processes, which will be exploredfurther in the ensuing discussion.

MethodologyMy study is primarily an exploration of the ways ekphrasis and bilingualism

can be interplaited in a creative writing class in an ESL context. In the course ofthis study, I have delineated the usage of literary texts and the visual media inan ESL creative writing class under the over arching term of ekphrasis. Yet, atthe same time, these texts and visual media are primarily British or Americanproductions and compositions. Hence, in designing the creative writingactivities, I have permitted my students to engage in various nativisationstrategies as they ekphrastically engage the Western literary texts and visualmedia as creative writing stimulants. Keeping this in mind, my article hasshowcased the activities designed for the specific purpose of engaging variousmodes of ekphrasis in conjunction with various nativisation tactics. In addition,it has also presented examples from the compositions of advanced level ESLcreative writers to highlight how these practices have been integrated in theirwritings and also subsequently elucidate the various modes of adaptationemployed by them. This is in accordance with the aim of this study, which is topresent how literary texts and visual media may be ekphrastically engaged tostimulate new modes of writing by taking on board the notions of hybridisa-tion and nativisation that may be integrated in the creative writing practices ofthe ESL creative writers.

As has been mentioned earlier, most of the resources that have been used indesigning the sample activities that follow are in English and based on Westernliterature since the students have to write in the target language. Due to thisfactor, one of the major hurdles that I thus encountered as a teacher of creativewriting was the fact that most of the Pakistani students ended upwriting about aculture and a lifestyle with which they were not intimately familiar. In order toovercome this hurdle, I granted them the freedom to change the culturalbackdrop of the situation that was presented in literary texts or the visual media.For instance, while working on the activities pertaining to the news clipping andmemoir-writing, a number of my students highlighted their own experiencesduring the disastrous earthquake that struck Pakistan in 2005, a tendency thatwas repeated in the memoir-writing activity. Moreover, students also incorpo-rated bilingualism along with ekphrasis in their writings to bring to the fore

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various class-based differences in the Pakistani society. I carefully selected theresources that I thought would be constructively utilised for stimulatingcreative writing through ekphrasis in an ESL environment. I designed therelevant activities that were then put in practice in a class of the undergraduatestudy program (Bachelor of Studies) at the Pakistan Institute of FashionDesign’s Islamabad Branch. These were ESL students with advanced levelwriting skills undertaking creative writing as a compulsory course.

The remaining portion of this article will highlight the activities that Idesigned for students in an ESL creative writing classroom engaging variousforms of ekphrastic practices. The outcomes of these activities have beenanalysed by taking examples from the compositions produced by variousESL students in their creative writing course.

Literature ReviewEkphrasis – i.e. the process of making an object of art (e.g. pictures) – as the

subject of literature has its roots in the Hellenistic tradition (Krieger 1992, 7),engaging one’s physical senses alongside the verbal elements to integrate astatic object within the smooth flow of language and discourse. Ruth Webb,while researching on the various dimensions of ekphrasis states that

It is able to arouse emotions through immaterial semblances of scenesthat are not present to the listener and may never have taken place. Ituses the medium of language to create an impact on the world, the powerof which is expressed in physical terms. In doing so, these poets havecollimated their own perceptions as they created verbal art about apicture or an inert object. (Webb 2009, 107)

Using visual entities has thus been a traditional means for stimulating thereaders’ imagination and creative writing processes. Yet, the images providedby the visual media do not function in isolation, as a matter of fact they reactand interact with the images that are already present in the readers’minds andwhich are anchored in their experiences. In this context, the indigenous cultureof a reader, and even that of a writer, plays a vital role in the decoding of thoseimages since visualisation and memory are closely related (Webb 2009, 110).

However, when it is a Pakistani writer who uses English as a medium ofexpression, an important distinction that can be felt is that ‘cultural presupposi-tions overload a text’ (Kachru 1986, 165). This is because a native writer’smemories, experiences and associations are embedded within his/ her autoch-thonous cultural domain. The incorporation of various forms of visual mediaand literary texts, particularly found in English literary traditions, and theirfusion with the native cultural foundation as found in countries like Pakistan,becomes a practical embodiment of the ‘syncretic practice’ (Ashcroft, Griffiths,and Tiffin 2004, 397). This practice is of vital importance in the analysis ofbilingual’s creativity. This form of creativity leads to the ‘nativization of context’(Kachru 1986, 165), which implies how cultural associations of an ESL creativewriting composition differs from the ‘expected historical and cultural milieu forEnglish literature’ (Kachru 1986, 165). This implies that an ESLwriter interprets a

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text of English literature in terms of his own cultural milieu as well, a tendencythat may be harnessed in an ESL creative writing class since the process ofsynthesising something new through ekphrastic practices will be supplementedby a nativised process of interpretation and synthesis.

The contextual nativisation leads to the ‘nativization of cohesion andcoherence’ (Kachru 1986, 166). Since an ESL creative writer is exposed to twolanguages and their syntactic and grammatical forms, hence a syncretism ispossible between the two languages. For example, some expressions may havea surface meaning of the second language but a deeper meaning of the firstlanguage. This aspect will be further highlighted in the analyses of the sampleactivities given ahead.

In addition these nativisation techniques are supplemented by the ‘nativiza-tion of rhetorical strategies’ (Kachru 1986166), e.g., the translation or ‘trans‐creation’ (Kachru 1986, 167) of local proverbs, idioms and speech styles that are‘culturally dependent’ (Kachru 1986, 167). This amalgamation involves ablending of the linguistic codes and structures of the native language and thetarget language of ESL creative writers. A number of compositions showcased asexamples in the ensuing discussion depict these nativisation and syncreticpractices at various tiers and will be analysed individually.

Before further dilating upon the idea of how creative writing can bestimulated in a bilingual ESL context through ekphrastic practices, it is necessaryto present an overview of the existing research that has been done in the area ofusing visual media and literary texts for stimulating creative writing in both firstand second language contexts.

Using the visual media for stimulating creative writing

The visual media have always been an intrinsic mode of communication forthe human species. The rationale behind the utilisation of carefully designedvisual aids in class can best be understood by the following observation givenin Managing Teaching and Learning in Further and Higher Education:

Audio, visual and technological aids to learning can be powerful tools toenrich your teaching and deepen your students’ learning. They canenliven and add interest to your communication. On the other hand, theycan enable you to reinforce particular learning. (Ashcroft and Foreman-Peck 1994, 106)

The importance of images in today’s daily social interaction cannot be denied.In text messages and social networking websites emoticons have replacedcomplete sentences in order to accurately convey an entire range of emotions andideas. If utilised constructively, this trend can be modified and used as astimulant to develop creative writing skills in students, specifically in an ESLcontext. In today’s internet dominated world, the students are more radicallyexposed to mixed media. This exposure needs to be harnessed since it canfunction as an analeptic in a creative writing classroom. For example, withadvancements in computer software it has become rather easy to download andedit videos and podcasts from the internet. These videos can then be effectively

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utilised in an ESL classroom. This is because, through the images portrayed onthe screen, their physical eyes tend to register minute details. This ‘visual-verbalhybridity’ (Stroupe 2000, 626) would prove to be beneficial in a second languageenvironment, where a writer negotiates with both the verbal and the visuallexica to chisel new images. Since the verbal and the visual are also artistic modesof expression, the engagement of ekphrasis – i.e. ‘to represent in wordssomething that is represented visually’ (POP 2008, 5) – can be used in an ESLcreative writing class. According to Doru POP:

Ekphrastic poetics is a way to open the visual arts to all the new forms ofexpression, like the cinema of reality, visual anthropology and the urbantheater representations, all of them means of translating daily life intoartistic production. (2008, 5)

This translation of day-to-day-experiences in some form of artistic mediumcan then have extended utilisations in an ESL classroom as my experience as acreative writing (ESL) educator has evinced and which has been dilated uponin the course of this discussion. My experience as a creative writing teacherseconds H. Moorman’s observation ‘that introducing ekphrastic poetry tostudents helped them become more observant in their reading and writing andin their study of visual images’ (2006, 50). In this context, languages (bothnative and target) as well as images do not merely act as the primary reagents,rather the culture of the ESL creative writers also act as a catalyst in the processas the examples taken from students’ works in the ensuing discussion indicate.Therefore, the ESL creative writing process incorporates Bakhtin’s notion ofhybridisation, which is defined as: ‘The mixing within a single concreteutterance, of two or more different linguistic consciousnesses, often widelyseparated in time and social space […] Hybridization […] tends to […] reducemultiple voices to a single voice’ (1981, 429). In a creative writing classroom,the two languages and the pictorial images reflect an ‘encounter, within thearena of an utterance, between two different linguistic consciousnesses’(Bakhtin 1981, 429).

In addition, it also interbraids with other modes of expression and discoursesthat are culturally embedded. This approach may thus be used to enrich acomposition and to provide the second language writers with a potpourri out ofwhich they are free to extract meanings and material that best expresses theirinnate ideas. In the context of bilingual creativity, however, there are not onlytwo forms of linguistic consciousnesses interacting with each other as well,multiple meaning-making processes influence each other, particularly with theincorporation of visual media for stimulating creative writing as the ESL creativewriters negotiate across different linguistic and generic boundaries.

Using literature for stimulating creative writing

Since a literary text is also a collection of ‘aesthetic signs’ (Krieger 1992, 4),involving the process of meaning-making, which is central to the ekphrasticpractices, literary texts may resultantly be used to stimulate creative writingthrough ekphrasis in an ESL context. Moorman states: ‘Indeed, both poetry and

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art speak to our imaginations through the power of images’ (2006, 47). Keepingthis in mind, I have also taken on board Dawson’s ideas as he rationalises thestudy of creative writing in Creative Writing and the New Humanities as a ‘meansof developing literary appreciation and critical skills’ (2005, 71), we may invertthis process and utilise the same ‘literary appreciation and critical skills’ (2005,71) to develop creative writing skills in second language learners. This isbecause, while engaged in literary studies, students are involved in the analysisof themes, characterisation, dialogues and other literary techniques that go intothe process of interpreting a text. Similarly, the students, while creating theirown compositions, can also question their own stories from similar anglesto generate their own narratives. For instance, they may create a characterperforming actions around a specific theme. However, in this context, thequestions of theme, characterisation, and dialogue construction are used not tointerpret a story but to construct it. In this context, an intriguing aspect ofcreative writing by ESL students is that in their work they create characterswho function within their own native worlds. For instance, they may appropri-ate some aspects of characterisation and settings presented in a literary text andre-cast them within their native environment.

This form of cultural modulation will be subjected to greater scrutiny withreference to sample activity five in the course of this article. Moreover, with apreliminary understanding of the syntax along with the various literary andstylistic devices (i.e. figures of speech, cohesive devices etc.), the studentsundertaking the task of creative writing feel more comfortable while engaginginnovatively with the target language. Therefore, in an undergraduate ESLclassroom, a creative writing teacher can utilise the approaches required inliterary analysis and hermeneutics by designing activities that utilise theseapproaches to enable the students to write innovatively. This form of engage-ment of literary analysis will also be analysed with the help of the examplesgleaned from the written compositions highlighted as examples in this article.

Keeping the questioning approach involved in the interpretation of literarytexts in mind, a creative writing teacher in an ESL classroom may utilisethis element by allowing the students to mould and reshape the text he/sheexperiences, creating alternate plots, etc. Therefore, numerous interestingactivities can be devised in a creative writing classroom by integrating literarytexts. However, a primary ingredient of these activities is that the studentsmust have strong reading skills since, in these activities, reading will be used asthe first stepping-stone towards creative writing.

Since creativewriting is an interactive activity,moving between the individualand the holistic extremes of the continuum of human experience, it can easilyincorporate social, communal, cultural, as well as religious stimuli and mixesthem into new forms and recipes. Referring to the interactive aspect of creativewriting, Graeme Harper in his book On Creative Writing writes that creativewriters ‘frequently move fluidly between the individual and holist, theirpersonal experience and the public ones that influence and impact upon them,is indicative of the fluidity of Creative Writing as a practice’ (2010, xi). Headds later on that ‘Creative Writing, for creative writers is first and foremost

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perception, memory and action because it is in perception, memory and actionthat Creative Writers become, and remain, Creative Writers’ (2010, xvi). Sinceperception is a vital component of ekphrasis, hence, using Harper’s statement as apremise for further discussion, we may assume that reading literature, just likewatching movies, is an act of perception, which oscillates between the personaland the collective. On the individual level, memory, past experiences, immediatemoods, physical environment, etc., all govern a reader’s response to a text. Inaddition, collective communal behaviours and responses also influence the wayan individual reacts to a literary composition. ESL creative writers can play onsuch responses and recreate new compositions.

Using Visual Media in an ESL ClassroomUsing a documentary

In order to provide ideas, associations and culturally defined images to ESLcreative writers, documentaries may be utilised to in ESL creative writingclassrooms. In order to compose a story set in an ancient civilisation, I showedmy students a documentary pertaining to that era. However, watching thedocumentary was not merely to be a passive activity, rather, some warm-upactivities or ‘task-viewing exercises’ (Garza 1996, 12) were also devised. Throughthis, not only did the second language writers develop their word bank andexpression, they also sifted through the documentary for accurate informationthat could prove beneficial for them when they started composing their owncomposition. These activities were primarily ‘teaching devices, not testingdevices’ (Garza 1996, 12) and their aim was to familiarise the students with thecontent that they are about to view. This active involvement of the students in thevisual medium that was shown to them enabled them to develop a moreaccurate understanding of the culture and ethos of the era and also catalysedreflective thinking as well as active participation. In the activity given below, Iencouraged my students to use culture-specific terms that have been mentionedin the documentary in their writings so that their compositions could be morerealistic.

The following activity may be used as a sample.

Sample activity one

(1) Imagine that you are an archaeologist. Write a first person narrative aboutan imaginary situation in which you actually discover something moreabout the pyramids.

(2) Imagine finding a key to a chamber in the pyramid. The chamber containstreasure and a secret scroll revealing the secret of immortality. However,there is a gang of thugs on your trail. Write an adventure story based onthis outline.

(3) Using the information given in the documentary, write a poem based onthe theme of ‘eternity’. Use symbols and imagery as presented in thedocumentary to convey your ideas.

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In the above activity, the students utilised cultural references present in thedocumentary to lend verisimilitude to their writings. The following paragraphfrom a composition by a student tends to elucidate this point further:

Ameen was all alone in the mastaba, alone except for the mummifiedremains of the nobleman who had secretly consorted with the Pharoah’smistress. Outside, the Nile slithered on in silence bespeaking of an eternalcomplacence that Ameen envied. All that hassle and ambition that his lifein Oxford bespoke off seemed to be a mocked at by the ancient river.‘Wherefore you alone here in dark grave, ya sadeek?’ echoed a voice,making Ameen jump.

The incorporation of the words ‘ya sadeek’ and ‘mastaba’ tends to convey anEgyptian culture and the ancient Egyptian death rituals, a factor that is furtheraccentuated by the grammatically flawed question which tends to highlight anon-native speaker of English. Further, such references within the student’scomposition tend to accentuate these cultural differences that are ingrained inthe writings of ESL creative writers. In addition, this activity becomes a vividexample of the ekphrastic process, infusing a new life into a documentary byrecasting it in the form of a fictional narrative. However, in doing so, thestudent has endeavoured to adhere to the cultural background as had beenprovided by the documentary.

Using advertisements

Owing to its flirtation with ‘the play of signifiers, the manipulation ofhistory and the erasure of temporal differences to evoke nostalgia, the use oflinguistic and visual puns, the arrangement of fragments, absences, substitu-tions, and synechdoches […] ’ (Woods 2007, 196), an advertisement may beused in a creative writing classroom as a stimulant for creative writingparticularly in an ESL context.

An advertisement, meticulously selected on the grounds that its content canbe innovatively exploited, may prove to be a catalyst for stimulating reflectivethinking which in turn would enable the ESL students to manipulate itcreatively. For this purpose, one or many advertisements can be used to initiaterumination and lead to the production of a novel work. For instance, one of theadvertisements that are suffused with a compact story line, symbols and imagesis the advertisement that sponsors Rolex watches being endorsed by RogerFederer. As a warm up activity, the students may be asked to answer questionsthat catalyse the thoughts of the viewers and at the same time to enable them tocollect information that may prove advantageous as the students subsequentlyengage in the writing activities. Next, certain creative writing activities may bedevised by the teacher engaging this visual medium and the information culledfrom it to provide the latent texture for the students’ own compositions. Thefollowing activity samples this technique:

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Sample activity two

Q1: Imagine that the player in the ad is a man returning to the game afterenduring difficult times. Write a story about his return.Q2: Using the ‘watch’ as the primary symbol, write a poem based on thetheme of ‘A Crown for Every Achievement’.Q3: A man who has been laid off from work turns on the television andsees this ad on his return home. How is he impacted by this ad? Is hefrustrated, annoyed, determined, sanguine, etc.? What does he do? Whathappens next?

While working on the above activity one of my students composed a storyabout a low-income Pakistani man laid off from work who ends up watchingthe ad in a makeshift tea kiosk on the streets of Karachi. While engaging thetechnique of ekphrasis again, the student engages in the process of using avisual medium as the subject of his literary composition and giving it a newmeaning an orientation vis-à-vis its re-contextualisation of in the writer’sindigenous environment:

The chai – the tea – was warm, it eased his shivering while his shirt wasdrenched in sweat that raced down his spine. Probably this is the last cup oftea that I can afford, he mused. His brow furrowed, he watched with emptyeyes as Federer swung the ball into the opponent’s court. I should havegiven that man a piece of my mind, Federer again swerved. The music of thead juxtaposed with the growl of Rickshaw engines and the pressurehorns of the dragon-like buses plying the roads of Karachi, collectivelymaking a mockery of the chaos in Ijaz’s life. He hated himself for hissurrender as the ball bounced against Federer’s racket in the ad on TV.‘Oye jigar! What are you doing here?’ The brazen intimacy of the voicedrew him out of his thoughts as he looked around to a friend in the kiosk.‘Abay yar!’ he responded with equal camaraderie.

While the advertisement provided the thematic substratum to his writing, thesocial setting was that of a Pakistani city with which the student was familiar.The dialogues incorporated here display bilingualism, using expressions such as‘jigar’ (best friend), ‘abay’ (an informal mode of hailing someone) etc., thatreinforce the street culture of Karachi. What becomes obvious is the nativisationof the context through an engagement of code-switching lending authenticity tothe experience. The ad becomes the resource which was ekphrasticallyintegrated by the ESL writer in a hybrid mode of writing. In addition, Federeris playing a game with marked Western associations, which has been used bythe ESL student to provide the thematic background of a story set in Pakistan.Hence, cultural syncretism manifests itself in this example.

Using news bulletins

News bulletins play a pivotal role in defining our conception of the world aswe develop opinions and even empathetic relationships with people who we

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do not even know, yet who are living in our world and are shaping our lives.Creative writing also taps into the same social, economic, political andemotional reservoirs to crystallise novel modes of expression. Generally, inthe context of second language learners, listening to daily news bulletins forpronunciation improvement and learning the target language are activities thatare invariably prescribed in all parts of the world. According to Thomas J.Garza:

Standard television programming, feature films, commercials, document-aries, and news items can all serve as effective pedagogical sourcematerials for teaching foreign linguoculture on all levels. Because videoallows for both audio and visual modalities of information input, thelanguage and cultural material is more readily contextualized, and, thus,more accessible to the learner. (1996, 4)

A synapse of news bulletins and creative writing activities has proven to bea viable technique to generate and channelise the creative potential of secondlanguage learners. In a creative writing class composed of second languagewriters, I chose such type of a news bulletin in which there was a sufficientnumber of visuals to supplement the content of the news report. The clippingof the news bulletin that provided the foundation for the following activitypertains to the disastrous Tsunami that struck Japan in early 2011 which Ishowed to my ESL creative writing students.

Sample activity three

Q1: Imagine that you are a person marooned on the roof of a high-risebuilding. Using the first person narrative, describe how you saved yourself.Q2: Have you ever experienced a natural disaster like a flood, a tropicalstorm or an earthquake? Recollect the disaster and the initial period afterit had ended or subsided. Write a memoir pertaining to that event.

While working on the activities given above, some of my Pakistani studentsrecalled their own experiences during the earthquake of 2005 and how theirfamilies dealt with loss and emotional trauma. In doing so, they highlightedtheir own locales and culture by focussing on minute details like clothing andtraditional foods. Bilingualism and local modes of expression were translatedinto English, as the following passage from a student’s composition tends toelucidate:

The Sun rose above the rubble-strewn mountains. The zalzala (Earthquake)had leveled everything. The scene seemed to have come out of the holynarrative about the Aaad and the Samood, transgressing nations whomAllah’s wrath had destroyed.

In the above passage, religious references tend to contour the narrative asthe student referred to the Quranic narratives about ancient societies in the

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time of the Prophet Salih. The interesting thing was that the news bulletin inEnglish was used innovatively by the student so that her native beliefs werearticulated in the target language so that her cultural identity was notcompromised and the syncretism between her native thought-patterns andthe target language produced a novel mode of expression and perspective.

Using movie clips

In a class of second language creative writers, scenes from a movie or a TVshow may also be used to stimulate writing because movies and TV showsportray live characters in realistic or believable settings, acting in plausiblesituations. These characters perform actions and hold conversations that areseasoned with multiple ingredients (e.g. the cultural and social features of theenvironment that is put on display, the voices of the characters, the workings oftheir minds, etc.), and yet convey shared human experiences and emotions. Asmy experience as a creative writing teacher shows, by delving into thesecomponents, the writers may proceed to devise their own plots and situationsby engaging the information provided by the scene that is televisedbefore them.

The students may be assigned the tasks of writing personal narratives andmemoirs. This is because a personal narrative ‘comprises, for many writers, afirst acquaintance with images, voices, stories and worlds significant to [… the]act of self-recognition’ (Mills 2010, 42) and follows a conversational tone.Similarly, a memoir concentrates on one or more episodes while maintaining aconversational tone. This idiomatic flow of self-expression is helpful for secondlanguage learners in discarding any sense of inhibition and reticence that theymay have in connection with using the target language freely and creatively.As a sample activity, I took a scene from a movie like the 1943 classic LassieCome Home and activities were devised for second language creative writers.Following are some sample questions based on the scene after Lassie is sold tothe Duke of Rudling and the Duke’s granddaughter senses the dog’s sadness.

Sample activity four

Q1: Let us assume that the dog had been abducted and now wanted toreturn home. Write a story about its efforts for its return.Q2: Have you ever had pets? If so, write a memoir about how you foundyour pet and how it became a significant feature of your life.

The last question enabled my Pakistani students to write about pets whomthey gave names in Urdu like ‘Dabboo’ for a dog and ‘Mithoo’ for a parrot. Indoing so, they used words from their local language in their memoirs so thattheir compositions bore testament to their indigenous life style. Again, onenotices different linguistic domains interbraiding with each other to bring tothe fore how this Pakistani ESL creative writer has borrowed an idea from amovie clip that presents an American girl with her dog. He has, however,recast it within his native milieu. The following passage from a student’s

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composition highlights a similar point as it substitutes nouns from Urdu intothe English syntax:

And so Dabboo, when the dog stole the bone from the Qasai (butcher), heraced towards the river.’ I was talking while Dabboo pranced around me.‘And in the river he saw another dog, and out of greed he jumped into thewater and lost his own bone. You see Dabboo, that dog had been greedy,just like you, and he lost the bone.‘bhaoo!’ Dabboo protested.

In response to question number one as showcased in sample activity four, astudent took on the persona of Lassie, trying to escape from its abductors. Anextract from that assignment is presented below:

I had to move fast, as I dug fast with my forepaws, panting, while thekidnappers gruff voices argued on the other side of the door. The Eye-patch man raised his voice as the argument became heated, ‘Kill the muttand take the money, I say!’ he yelled. The taste of moist mud spreadacross my taste buds, and the smell seeped into my nostrils, mixed withthe smell of blood as my wounded paw bled. Suddenly, the fragrance ofrose and damask mixed with the scent of the mud. There was silenceoutside. Rose and damask, rose and damask – Karen? The newhousekeeper. How’d she find me? Had Priscilla sent her? Perhaps she’dsave me. ‘Knock it off! The dog has got to go!’

This second example tends to show another response to the activities givenabove. In this example, the ESL student has entered the cultural frameworkprovided by the movie itself, manipulating the visual information provided bythe scene to reconstruct the story in words. In doing so, the work acquiresverisimilitude in expression since the cultural background and settings for thestory have been clearly presented by the movie clip itself. In this context, thisPakistani creative writer has crossed the cultural domain by relying on theimages as perceived by sight and sound and integrating them to re-create thestory in her own words while engaged in the process of ekphrasis.

Using Literature for Stimulating Creative WritingLiterary texts ranging across a multiple range of genres, like poetic works and

extracts from novels and plays, may also be incorporated in a creative writingclassroom to provide a stimulus for students to compose poetry, stories andmemoirs. I provided my ESL students with a list of quotations from a literarytext or from multiple literary texts by the same author. These quotations werethen rewoven into the compositions of the students, either as themes or titles, orintegrated into the new compositions through parataxis (Mansoor 2011, 210).

In another activity, the students were also given an extract from a novel,memoir or a story. The relevant expressions were then extracted from the textand re-integrated into the composition that the students wrote.

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This activity has been showcased as follows where the students were givenextracts from the novel Anne of Green Gables in advance.

Sample activity five

Q1: Imagine that you are Anne Shirley. Write a poem from Anne’sperspective about her arrival at a new home and acquiring a new family.Q2: Imagine that you are Anne Shirley’s best friend, Diana. Write a poemin the stanzaic form, celebrating your friendship. You may integrate thephrases and words selected from the given extract into your own poem.

In attempting question two, a Pakistani student of creative writing producedthe following poem, entitled ‘Ainy’ in stanzaic form:

Bathed in the moon’s effulgenceShe skips along in pure happiness.‘Mahnoor!’ she calls, and I reply,‘Ainy!’ we run, exuding joy,Up the stairs of the haveli,We watch the summer moonRoll like a chawanniAmidst a congregation of diyas.‘Pakki dosti.’ ‘Best friends!’We proclaim, her and I, hands held,Orphan Ainy, with henna-hued hairAnd I, both bound in friendship.

In this poem, the student has picked up the theme of friendship betweentwo girls, one an orphan like Anne Shirley, and the other a rich girl like Diana.However, while maintaining the universality of the theme of friendship and thenature of the relationship between the two girls, this student has re-cast hertwo characters within a Pakistani framework, thus permitting the context of thesituation to be nativised. This indigenisation manifests itself through theinsertion of unglossed words from Urdu like haveli (mansion), chawanni (a coin)and diyas (clay lamps) and glossing (‘Pakki dosti.’ ‘Best friends!’) . Thistechnique works in two dimensions, while it increases the cultural gap betweenthe literary text and the Pakistani creative writing student, its recasting withina Pakistani context enables the writer to not only connect with the charactersbut also to bring her personal experience of her own culture within theframework of her composition. This form of cultural modulation is alsoapparent in the example given after sample activity five, where a student hassubstituted the name Anne with its Pakistani counterpart and called her Ainy,and then written a poem from the perspective of Mahnoor, a name whichmeans ‘the light of the moon’, stemming from the name’s association withDiana, the moon goddess.

The student has also constantly engaged herself in the process of criticalinquiry into the nature of the friendship between Anne and Diana and recast itwithin an indigenous setting. In doing so, she has established the settings and

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the theme as the process of the inquiry went into the making of thecomposition instead of its decoding. It is also important to notice that in thisactivity the engagement of literary analysis of a text manifests itself through thequestions that went into the evaluation of Anne Shirley and Diana were thenre-engaged in a different cultural setting by creating a composition aboutPakistani equivalents of Anne and Diana.

Integrating literary texts for writing one-act plays

In order to provide the ESL students with a stimulant for writing a one-actplay, I introduced a scene from a literary text and used it as a foundation forcomposing a one-act play. Since the function of a one-act play is ‘showing’(Morrison 2010, 43) and not ‘telling’ (Morrison 2010, 43), most of the energiesof the ESL creative writers were focused on devising stage settings, stagedirections and composing dialogues with instructions for the enactment of thescene. Dramatic performances are not devoid of symbols and some items onthe stage were exploited to symbolically refer to certain important themes

Some sample activities related to composing one-act plays haves been show-cased below:

Sample activity six

Q1: Recollect the novel The Wind in the Willows. Imagine that Toad is up tosome mischief again despite his promises after the battle with the Weaselsfor Toad Hall. Write a one-act play based on the pranks of Toad and thereaction of his friends.Q2: Recall the novel Heidi by Johanna Spyri. Write a one-act play aboutthe past of Heidi’s grandfather. Why did he become a recluse and leave tolive up on the Alps?

In writing a one-act play about Heidi’s grandfather, a student wrote asoliloquy pertaining to his memories from the past and his becoming a recluse:

Alm Uncle: Why did she ever come into my life? When will my sins beatoned? Tobias buried, Adelheid departed, Heidi taken away. How muchmore am I to bear? Can nothing placate the anger of God? Bah! The sun isa better companion, it departs and comes back! The goats are moresympathetic than the villagers, and Heidi loved them. The miserablepeople down there, speculating about my miserable life, my sins! Thestares, the speculation, the accusation and the conviction … what do theyknow? But my son, oh my son! And how true the conviction, my sins areto blame. My son buried under the load of my sins. No atonement andshe’s gone again! How many times will they touch my life and leave me?

In this example, the ESL student has engaged in the process of characterisa-tion based on the information provided in a literary text. However, basing hiscomposition on the sketchy details provided by the gossiping Dete, the student

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has used the rest of the novel to add texture to the memories of the old man. Inaddition, however, we also find that the student has entered the fictional worldof Johanna Spyri, recreating and extending its perimeter along temporal lines.While this student has maintained the cultural integrity of the original text,another student re-cast the story of Toad in a Pakistani context, by renaminghim Saeen Duddoo, an Urdu equivalent of Mr. Toad of Toad Hall. Following is adialogue between the Pakistani Toad and the Pakistani counterpart of a weaselcalled Neola from the one-act play composed by a Pakistani student:

Saeen Duddoo: Hey don’t call me Saeen Duddoo, I am Toad, the venerableMr. Toad Esq. Go back to your measly little hole, you low down weasel!(The Weasel looks at Saeen Duddoo with annoyed suspicion and asks in anenraged tone)Neola: What is Weasel! Hain?!!! What you just say me, I no Weasel Diesel!Saeen Duddoo (gulping): Ohho, you don’t have to get angry, Weasel isEnglish for Neola. I said it out of respect. Mr. Weasel represents gentility,culture, civilization! Neola sounds so Desi, so local!Neola: I likeDesi, I am Desi! But you speak gitpit in English. I no understand.You a baboo, a gentleman.

In this example, the student has re-framed the story in a Pakistani environ-ment, with the arrogant, elitist, English-speaking class represented throughSaeen Duddoo and the conspiring, resentful, and connivingNeola representing thelower class individual, a factor that is accentuated with his flawed Englishdisplaying grammatical shifts, along with incorporation of unglossed Urduinterjections like Hain, gitpit and Ohho as examples of ‘culturally dependentspeech styles’ (Kachru 1986, 167). Similarly, the adoration of the English-speaking Pakistanis for a Western lifestyle emanating from Pakistan’s colonialpast has been mocked at as Saeen Duddoo endeavours to become Mr. Toad Esq.Again, the student is engaging his own experiences in a class-ridden Pakistanisociety and blending them with the fictional world of The Wind in the Willows tocreate a new composition that allows osmosis across cultural as well as genericboundaries in a creative writing class ensuring linguistic and cultural hybridity.What one notices here is how the ‘“expected” cultural and historical milieu forEnglish literature’ (Kachru 1986, 165) has been altered to conform with theindigenous speech patterns that conform with the social placement of thecharacters involved becoming a sound example of Bakhtin’s notion of hybridisa-tion which involves the interbraiding of ‘two different linguistic conscious-nesses’ (Bakhtin 1981, 429).

It was also observed, with reference to the other compositions that thestudents produced for activities five and sox, they also utilised expressions andvocabulary present in the given extracts/ texts and integrated them into theirown syntax. In doing so, even the students with a relatively weak expression inEnglish were able to effectively express their ideas since this activity enabledthem to build their vocabulary and expression. This enabled them to jump overrestrictions in their vocabulary and also allowed them to put it into applicationby engaging it into their own syntax. Again, a Western literary text was used as

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an ekphrastic model for creative writing, but the native writers modulated themaccording to their own cultural paradigms.

ConclusionTo conclude, the activities given in this article, are rather elastic in their

scope, permitting innovation and improvement according to the requirementsof the students opting for this subject in an L2 environment. An importantpoint that was kept in mind while designing these activities was how ekphrasiswas to be used as a means of encouraging ESL creative writers to engage withforeign media and Western literary texts in an innovative way. This innovationinvolves the engagement of the impact of the native culture and language onthe interpretation of the Western texts and media provided to them as well ason the synthesis of new modes of expression and writing through bilingualismand nativisation strategies. However, some important questions also stem fromthis engagement with Western literature and visual media utilising English as amedium of expression in a creative writing classroom. One of these questions iswhether the exposure to canonical texts is a continuation of cultural imperi-alism and a legacy of British colonial rule in the Sub-Continent. The peoplehere saw its acquisition as mandatory because of the ‘progress and the socialelevation an acquisition of this language ensured.’ (Mansoor 2012b, 19).However, English was nativised in the process allowing the blending ofautochthonous literary genres, thought and linguistic patterns found in Urdublending with the English syntax to create what has now been termed asPakistani English and has led to the creation of Pakistani Literature in Englishas a distinctive genre.

In my other study entitled ‘The Recipe for Novelty: Using Bilingualism andIndigenous Literary Genres in an Advanced Level L2 Creative Writing Contextin Pakistan’ I have highlighted how:

even a casual reading of many Pakistani poets writing in English reveals asimilar code-switching as they incorporate lexical items from theirindigenous languages into the English syntax. In doing so, they notonly highlight an experience that is essentially entrenched in their owncultural substratum, it also enriches and innovatively modifies the syntaxof the target language i.e. English. […] This substitution and fusion hasled to the creation of a variant form of English, which many non-Nativewriters of English exploit to the maximum in their Creative Writings.(Mansoor 2012a, 1–2)

The utilisation of this form of ‘hybridisation’ (Bhabha 1994, 158) in a creativewriting classroom, ensures the germination of novel results as the examplesfrom the students’ works above have elucidated. Code-switching, code-mixing,‘the configuration of two or more codes’ (Kachru 1986, 164), and the alterationof meanings lexically and grammatically all come into play as the ESL studentsinteract with Western Literature in innovative ways, thus ensuring a novelty intheir works by engaging their own cultural paradigms with those of the West.

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Correspondence

Any correspondence should be directed to Asma Mansoor, Department ofEnglish, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan, (asma.arwen@gmail.com)

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