From Wales to Vermont – A Round Trip – a Personal Reflection on Creative Writing in the USA and the UK

Abstract

The principle of teaching the creative arts is central to our civilization. From Socrates and Plato, through Wordsworth and Coleridge, Owen and Sassoon, Pound and Eliot to Lowell and Plath, the intimate and constructive sharing of ideas and words, the incorporation of another writer’s ideas and strategies, underpins many original texts. It is a lonely business being a writer: sometimes it has to be, but sometimes that sharing of texts in formative stages can be a shared burden. In Tobias Woolf’s novel, Old School the narrator explains that his private boys’ school holds literature to be as central as the conventional American goals of team sports. Famous writers are guests of the school and for each visit a competition is held: the best piece of student writing wins for that person a personal meeting, a tutorial with Robert Frost or Ernest Hemingway.