The Bag of Stars
an invitation to October's quiet writing hour
The title, ‘The Bag of Stars’, comes from the final line of Ursula K. Le Guin's wonderful essay / book, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 'Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.'
As Donna Harraway writes in her incisive introduction to the Terra Ignota edition I keep close by on my desk…
It matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what concepts we think to think other concepts with… That’s how worlding gets on with itself in dragon time. A brave student of dragons, Le Guin’s stories are capacious bags for collecting, carrying, and telling the stuff of living. ‘A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.’ p. 10.
The format for The Bag of Stars is simple: we meet online at 7am, take a couple of minutes to greet and settle, when I share a poem, a prose excerpt or sometimes a visual. These can sometimes open an entryway to a piece of writing for participants and there has been more than one delightful incident of synchronicity and serendipity in the group over the past year as a result. Though I mainly view them as something to warm up the creative room, who knows what forces come into play when we come together with generous and playful intentions.
We then mute our devices and we each turn our focus, our playful attention, to our own personal writing project, our own ‘bag of stars’ for the hour. At 7.55 everyone comes back together, one or two may share a little about what they achieved during the hour if they wish, and the session will close at 8am. We each go on into our day feeling more centred, more grounded. We have created, we are creators. We now know this bag is indeed capacious and generous.
As one participant wrote in an email after the September sessions: 'I still don't fully understand the alchemy of it all, but it is a space where I get stuff done!'Dates: Monday, 21st October to Friday, 25th October.
Time: 7am to 8am GMT+1, on Zoom. I would love to meet you there.
Join me.
Yes, please!