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August 20 – Bon Voyage, Mes Amis!

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August 20 marked the very last day of the 2014 Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Yoga & Writing Retreat at the Château de Verderonne.  The day started early for me at 5:30 am with me bidding adieu to our wonderful and talented intern, Meghan Tilley, as she when to catch her flight at Charles de Gaulle Airport.  By 8 am, all of our terrific writers, artists, and yoga-philes sat down at the great table in the Château de Verderonne hunting lodge to have one last breakfast together.  Our writers would be returning home to the US, the Philippines, the UK, and Germany after this all-too-short and productive retreat.  Breakfast was bittersweet as we all said our fond farewells, exchanged emails, and promised to keep in touch with our writing partners and workshop groups.  We chose November 20 as our first post-retreat rendez-vous date when all of our 2014 retreat participants would meet via Skype to exchange their writing and update us on the projects we had begun at the Château de Verderonne.  Participants began to make their way to the train station and airport around 11 am.  Some writers would be staying a few days extra in Paris while others would do a short tour of Europe before they returned home.

After 11 am, only a few of the participants and instructors remained at the Château de Verderonne.  We thanked Gina & Jessica for their incredibility generosity and fierceness of spirit, which brought a of light and great humor to the retreat.  We walked around the blooming flower gardens and lush green estates of the château one more time together, remembered our meetings on the trampoline, the incredible meals we had made together, and all the writing that was produced on the trip.  We made a pact to not only keep in touch, but to keep each other posted on our creative projects, and to most of all, keep on writing.  The creative energy at the end of the trip was tangible.  And after spending the afternoon working on our own writing and art, Norma, Elissa, and I joined Monsieur and Madame Marié de l’Isle for one last dinner at the château.  Over apéritifs and a wonderful home-cooked meal, we spoke of our favorite French authors and thinkers, the luminaries who had graced the Château de Verderonne, and the exciting plans for the château’s future.

Returning to our rooms late in the evening when the fog and mist had settled over the château’s gardens, we enjoyed one last midnight discussion together, and then rested for the next day we would be heading off to Paris!  In Paris, we met up with Jessica and Antonia Alexandra Klimenko, a celebrated member of SpokenWord Paris and one of the most renowned English-language poets currently living in Paris.  Together, we enjoyed a to-die-for Morrocan meal complete with mouth-watering tajines, delicious couscous, and hot mint tea at La Baracka in Paris.  A black cat with green eyes watched us overhead as we enjoyed our dinner together.  Then we visited L’altelier Charonne which was featuring Jazz Manouche and Tzigane music.  Two of the musicians were of Roma descent and the third was Italian, and together they blended French classical music styles, bossa nova, and traditional Gypsy music themes together beautifully.  After the concert, Jess and Norma had a chance to chat with the Roma musicians as well.

After the amazing concert, we noticed an unmarked building with gorgeous electric lights, dark curtains, and an assortment of odd mid-century modern furniture inside.  The place was actually a tavern called Bar Sans Nom (A Bar With No Name), and as the owner later described it to us, the place purposefully lacked a marquee sign and any exterior indication that it was a bar at all.  In this way, the tavern could be magical.  Hard to spot the first time, and even harder to find the second.  The dark velvet walls seemed to invite.  And sitting there in the middle of old television sets, typewriters, pianofortes, and hard-metal fans, it was easy to wonder if this place was really real, or rather, if it was something we had imagined to entertain one last evening together.

–  Rita Banerjee, Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s Creative Director

August 19 – A Literary Rendez-vous & Mis-Translations at the Château de Verderonne

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Our installation for Mst Marie
Norma and the writings we did for Msr Marie
Making tomato sauce
Norma making hummus
Elissa, Nannie and Janet
Heading to drinks at the Chateau!
The view from the bell tower!
The view from the bell tower!

Today was the penultimate day of our yoga & writing retreat at the Château de Verderonne.  After early morning yoga & breakfast, the morning kicked off with one last writing seminar.  Norma and I taught a class on “Manuscript Revision and Publication Strategies.”  We reviewed different techniques for revising poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and theatre pieces, gave an overview of the magazine submission process, and discussed how writers could put together and edit book-length manuscripts and query their book projects to agents, presses, and publishers.  After class, we had a nice afternoon break.  Some writers continued to work on their own projects in small groups, while others took one last tour of the French countryside and/or decided to make one last meal together.  With fresh tomatoes from the Verderonne greenhouse, Gina made a killer tomato sauce for spagetti which was based on a family recipe.  Norma chipped in with some delicious and garlicky hummus, and an onion-egg fry.  I made chili-seasoned baked potatoes, and Megan made some awesome butter-herb pasta.  In the afternoon, participants joined Elissa for one last yoga session together.  Elissa shared some great massage techniques and aromatherapy oils with everyone.  And then we sat down to eat our home-made snacks and then snuck out to glam up for our big night out!

After classes ended, we were invited to have apéros and hors d’oeuvres with Monsieur and Madame Marié de l’Isle at their residence, the Château de Verderonne, our lovely 17th century castle with towers dating from 1450.  The foundation for the castle was laid on the edge of the town, Liancourt in Picardy, in the early 11th century, and the castle had been rebuilt in many styles from Medieval to French Classical in the years that followed.

M. Marié began the evening by pointing out the gorgeous modern paintings of the château, many of which are currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  He also told us how his father had been at designer for the 16th-18th Century French Art Exhibit in the Met in the 1960s.  After enjoying the château’s galleries and gorgeous mote-side garden views, M. Marié showed us some rare books from the Château de Verderonne 17th century library collection.  One of the books contained beautiful maps of the original château, its original French classical gardens, and later English garden editions.  The book also contained information about surrounding châteaus and monuments in the Picardy region of France.

He then toasted all our lovely and talented writers on the retreat, and that’s when the fun began.  All the writers had prepared two short poems to present to Monsieur and Madame Marié de l’Isle .  The poems were inspired by Norma’s writing prompt from her class, “Shadow, Light, and the Crepuscular.”  Each writer had to find an evocative object on the grounds of the Château de Verderonne, study it in bright illumination and then in near darkness, and then write two pieces based on how the object was perceived in these two very different frames of light.  Some writers chose to produce OULIPO-inspired Snowball poems about their objects, while other opted for a more narrative approach.  Monsieur and Madame Marié de l’Isle seemed to enjoy all wonderful writing produced about evocative objects at the Château de Verderonne.  They also enjoyed Norma’s art-instillation of the light-and-shadow poems and will be adding the collection to the permanent library at the château.

After drinks and poetry, M. Marié continued the tour of the grand château.  He told us about Claude-Adrien Helvétius, a French Enlightenment thinker who had been one of the founding contributors to Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie in the 18th century, had housed his personal library at the Château de Verderonne.  Helvétius’s daughter, Geneviève Helvétius, had lived at the Château de Verderonne with her husband, and had collected her father’s books there.  Helvétius’s wife, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, maintained one of the most well-known literary salons in the 17th century, and in her salon, Madame Helvétius frequently hosted Voltaire, Diderot, Fontenelle as well as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Napoléon Bonaparte.  In addition to his contributions to the Encyclopédie, Helvétius was known for publishing De l’espirit (Of the Spirit), a text exploring atheism, egalitarianism, psychology, and intelligence.  Helvétius’s text was so controversial that the book was condemned by the Paris Parlement and La Sorbonne, and burned by the Catholic Church for being so subversive and atheistic.  The library is currently being renovated but would soon display Helvétius’s full collection of tomes and papers again.  In addition to these papers, many of the original manuscripts for the original plays performed during the 16-18th centuries at the Château de Verderonne’s still-standing classical French theatre will also be on display in the new renovated library.

After a tour of the library and the front rooms of the château, M. Marié took us on a tour of the château’s attic and bell tower.  On the top floor, we found beautiful slate-blue painted rooms for visiting courtesans complete with antique-clawed bathtubs and large French windows.  We also saw some spectacular views of the château’s surrounding grounds from the top floor.  Then off we went to the bell-tower, which was used to announce dinner and other import occasions to visitors and staff at the château for centuries.  The hike up the bell tower was steep and a little precarious, and once we let go of our vertigo and climbed onto the small gazebo on the roof, we could see miles and miles of the château’s lush green country estates.  Standing at the center of the center of the bell tower of the Château de Verderonne, one could almost look back, far back to a time when château gracefully straddled the imaginary town line between Liancourt and Rosey.  One could see, from up here, how the tree-lined pathways branched out from the focal point of the château in perfect perpendicular lines.  And one could imagine French luminaries and encyclopédistes walking across the château’s stage, as visiting courtesans like Marie-Antoinette roamed through the château’s hidden rooms and endless green gardens.

Dreaming of courtesans, country actors, and classical writers, we enjoyed one last dinner together with the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop group.  And then after dinner, we sat down for one last salon game, and played “Mis-tanslations,” a literary game based on Robert Lowell’s idea of purposefully mis-reading and mis-translating a foreign-language text.  Writers read out loud famous texts from medieval and classical French, Swahili, Hebrew, Romani, Bengali, Hungarian, Tagalog, and Mandarin, and our job was to decipher what these poems and essays were saying in English.  Some of the writing produced evoked the sounds and emotions of each read piece while others highlighted how mis-translations could play with both sense and non-sense simultaneously.  Overall, we had some very interesting new interpretations of Montaigne, Baudelaire, Macbeth, Roma and Hebrew folk songs, Bengali modernist poetry, “I’m a Little Teapot,” Jack Kerouac, and Hungarian Roma verse.

– Rita Banerjee, Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s Creative Director

August 17 – Suspense, Experiments, and Secret Passageways au Château de Verderonne

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Some delicious afternoon treats before workshop!
Entrance to the biggest ice-storage cave in France

We had a beautiful day that started off with delicious French pastries from a local pastry shop. Yum.  Rita taught a craft of writing seminar in the morning on using Rasa theory to create emotion and suspense in theater and fiction.  Everyone practiced creating emotionally charged scenes in their narratives.  In the afternoon, I taught a class where we learned about traditional and contemporary French poetry.  We even tried our hand at experimenting with some OULIPO (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle) writing experiments.

In the early evening, Monsieur Marié de l’Isle took us on a walk to the ice house, one of the oldest in France.  We learned that in the days before freezers and refrigerators, people would harvest ice in the winter, storing it in a deep hole they constructed underground, called the ice house.  Ice was very expensive and enjoyed by royals and the nobility as a treat.  After a walk through the woods, we carefully ventured down the ivy and thorn covered stone steps, holding hands, taking care not to step on the slugs and precious escargot!  Then, we walked through a dark tunnel guarded by many spiders and stared down into the depths of what looked like an oubliette.  It was eerie to imagine the ice stored here centuries ago, people navigating their way here with oil lamps to scrape nature’s simple delicacy for some rich man’s table.

Then, on our way back, we saw a hideout called a “muche” in the old Picard language.  Now gated, these underground dwellings served as temporary shelters and storage cellars when military raids would plague the region.  It was a very interesting walk, and we were all inspired by the mystery in the air whilst exploring these secret passageways and ivy-grown tunnels long forgotten.

– Diana Norma Szokolyai, Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s Artistic Director

 

August 16 – Yoga & Yearning at the Château de Verderonne

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Yoga fun!
Meghann enjoying some yoga
Christina enjoying yoga!
Group pose!

Saturday began with fresh breakfast and lessons on yearning.  Jessica Reidy taught the class on using character’s yearning – both interior and superficial – to not only deepen the plot, but make it believable and authentic.  In the afternoon, we had our second workshop, breaking off into small groups to discuss and critique each other’s work. It was bright and sunny for the first time in a few days, so most groups sat outside in the chateau’s courtyards to soak up some sun and talk writing.  After a long day at Chantilly, it was wonderful to relax and enjoy the craft and weather.

– Megan Tilley, CWW Editing & Communications Intern

August 15 – Cambridge Writers’ Workshop takes on Chantilly!

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We found cats
Gina rocking the couch
Nannie enjoying some delicious midday treats
Rita, Norma, Jess and Gina
Dancing horses
Inside the Chateau
Norma exploring Chantilly
Norma discovering the grounds of Chantilly

Today the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop headed off to Chantilly, known for it’s lovely whipped cream, genuflecting horses, and fancy French lace! (La vie française est toujours magnifique!!) The day started off with a casual stroll through Chantilly’s downtown area where some of our participants made friends with the local cats 😉 Next up, an amazing hat and jewelry shop where our writers tried on some French berets and classic fedoras and struck a pose worthy of any good hard-boiled femme fatale 😉 After our Chantilly noir moment, we stopped by a local teahouse for some café gourmand, and then headed off to the stables to see the genuflecting horses! The show, Cheval, Rêve, & Poesie, featured dancing horses, acrobats, court jesters, and beautiful music and costumes from France, Russia, Spain, China, and India! After the program, some of the ladies sat down for a drink and observed the flâneurs passing by. Then Gina & I headed off to the Château de Chantilly to check out the gorgeous private art collection, beautiful classical library, monkey room, and animal motifs in the château. Janet captured a wonderful shot of a skinned lion tapestry (which she says helped spark her creative writing but which might also haunt her forever), and another group of writers, including Nannie, Norma, Stephanie, and Janet, went off to explore the sheep and lambs on the pastures of Château de Chantilly, and in doing so, found some hidden steps to an ancient and ruined bridge which lead to a hidden island. Climbing the moss-covered steps, they found a perfect, secluded spot to spend awhile composing a new tale and some new poetry. All in all, our little trip to Chantilly was filled with hidden treasures, secret enclaves, much delicious food and food for thought, and unexpected moments of poetry.

– Rita Banerjee, Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s Creative Director

August 14 – Emotion & Suspense at the Château de Verderonne

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After yoga in the morning, Rita taught a class on Emotion and Suspense in Theatre and Fiction, which included several writing prompts and a lesson on how to build both tension and suspense, as well as including emotion without being too overt or cliché.  After that, we had free writing.  The weather was gorgeous, and many went outside to enjoy the views of the chateau and gardens.  We discovered that some chicks had hatched in the chicken coop – they were extremely adorable. Yoga concluded the free writing period.  After dinner we had a knitting circle – a great end to a beautiful day.

– Megan Tilley, CWW Editing & Communications Intern  

August 13 – Cambridge Writers’ Workshop at the Château de Verderonne

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Our chef

At brunch this morning, we tried something new, “flan de carrotes.”  In the pictures, you can see Christina preparing for our afternoon writing workshop, along with Stephanie, Nannie and other participants in the Blue Salon.  Some of us wrote one act plays , new poems, novel excerpts, screen plays, and short stories.  We worked hard to upload our own by noon, and to read everyone’s work by 2:00 p.m.  Then, we critiqued each other using Liz Lerman’s method during our afternoon workshop.  A welcome break was feeding the chickens.  They follow us around now that they know we are the bearers of baguettes.  Some eggs are waiting to hatch!  After some bouts of down pouring rain, the sun kept peaking out.  We enjoyed a walk through the gardens and greenhouses.  At dinner, another specialty  appetizer was a terrine with chicken, carrots, green beans, and other vegetables.  Dessert was crème au chocolat…mmmm….along with Chef Monique’s favorite family recipe for “yogurt bread.”

At night, some of us relaxed during knitting circle.  Others did some creative writing or talked and over an herbal tea before bed.  Elissa gave a wonderful afternoon yoga class in the courtyard.  Everyone was treated to a little head massage with geranium oil.  All in all, it was  quiet and peaceful day at the Château de Verderonne and a productive workshop day.

– Diana Norma Szokolyai, Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s Artistic Director

August 12 – Cambridge Writers’ Workshop at the Château de Verderonne

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“Je veux du soleil.”  One of the songs I played for the four Juliets just a couple of days ago,  but it was true, like the song, I wanted sun or better put, sunlight.  My last day at the CWW retreat began more relaxed and with a bit of sun than others.  Taking advantage of the break of sunlight I shot more exterior shots; the Lili pond, the gardens, a family of geese, and of people writing.  Everyone was working on their script, play, or novel around in the common areas which they were getting ready to present to be critiqued the next day.  A tranquil and calm mode pleasantly hummed throughout the house, only to be interrupted by rain, loud rain, but with the sun shinning.

I have been in my share of sun-showers but nothing so persistent and, well, confusing.  Shadows were cast stubbornly outside while the rain rushed to the earth as if to prove that they both could co-exist.  Rita’s class on character development had everyone listening intently but every so often people’s concentration would be broken by the absolute volume of the downpour.  Hallway doors had to be closed shut so as to reduce the noise, though candles were nostalgically lit in the room.

After a filling dinner, I sat down with our resident actress/singer Gina as she belted out “Wide Awake” by Katy Perry while I played guitar. Jess sang “Anything but Down” by Sheryl Crow and as one of the final sing a longs we all sang “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen.

Leaving the next morning at 7am from the chateau to catch my flight back to NYC I realized that even though I was there to film, I learned a bit on narrative writing myself. Having sat in the workshops and listening to other people’s excerpts of their own writing I gained some new techniques that could be used in my own song-writing. Everyone had read out loud examples of the stories and poems they had written, and each person had their own way to make you sit up and listen to the beautiful stories unfolding from their minds.  I only wish I could write as well as they could.  Our retreat writers invite the listener to stay and want more.  I wish to one day see their scripts in a film, their plays being produced or their novels at the bookstore.  It was a pleasure meeting all of you writers, and I hope to see all your writing projects fulfilled soon.

– Victor Pachas, CWW Multimedia Specialist

August 11 – Cambridge Writers’ Workshop in Paris!

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Our crepe maker extraordinaire, John
In Paris!
Cafe cat
Hot chocolate!
Art in the flea market
Dinner in Paris!
Megan trying to be culinarily adventurous
Rita and Elissa

M. Marié drove us to the Liancourt-Rantigny station early in the morning, while the fog still clung to the base of the trees. We were on our way to Paris, city of lights, for a day of exploration and inspiration.

The train ride rattled by in a green blur of passing landscape until we arrived in Paris. The gardens of the Medici palace are swarming with people soaking in the sun after a recent spat of rain, relaxed in green metal chairs on the carefully manicured gravel walkways. Children pushed colorful toy yachts across a fountain, yelling to each other and their parents as the boats skimmed across the water.

We made out way to a small crepe stand outside the garden, enjoying the hot food prepared by John, who showed us his favorite trick over and over again – cutting a banana furiously while staring us in the eye, never missing or making a mistake. After enjoying our food, we went to a cafe for drinks and a character sketch writing exercise. The cafe cat watched the passersby and us with mild curiosity, tolerating pets and attention.

From there, the flea market was an explosion of colors and accents, men with knockoff designer sunglasses following crowds headed towards the stalls with, pardon! pardon! Clothes printed with slightly incorrect English slogans hung in stalls next to assortments of hookah pipes and cheap jewelry. Inside, antique furniture competed for attention – glass tables supported by golden scorpions, lacquered benches, delicate side tables with spindled legs, and fainting couches were set up in mock arrangements, no seat please printed on papers propped on the couches and chairs.

Upstairs, books with crumbling spines and magazines housed in plastic slips competed on rickety tables and bookshelves. Clothing hung in colored rows, shop keepers chatting to each other, and to the artists sandwiched between them.

After the market, we headed back into the heart of Paris to eat dinner at Les Fêtes Galantes. The restaurant only held a few tables, and we were greeted by the wife of the chef. The walls were plastered in pictures and notes left by guests, and one wall even held a few sets of lingerie. The food was unbelievable and perfectly cooked – an excellent way to end a day in Paris.

– Megan Tilley, CWW Editing & Communications Intern

August 10 – Yoga & Writing at the Château de Verderonne

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Elissa, Rita and Norma
Norma in the green house

Day 4 of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Yoga & Writing Retreat at the Château de Verderonne started with atmospheric weather.  The morning began at 8 am with the daily feeding of the chickens.  This year, the chateau had two roosters and a bounty of hens so all was well with the gender balance.  After feeding the chicks, I was off to yoga with Elissa Lewis, who taught us some interesting balancing and partner poses today.  After a quick brunch, Norma taught a wonderful class on “Shadow, Light, and the Crepuscular.”  In the class, Norma quoted sections on bunraku (Japanese puppet theatre), ceramics, lighting, and traditional Japanese lacquerware from Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Light and Shadows, and encouraged participants to produce writing which traced how objects and situations seemed to alter with changing light, and how illumination and shadows could help cast and give depth to a scene.  After our writing workshop, one of our participants, Christina, made the most wonderful chocolate covered Madeleines for our dining pleasure!  Proust would have been proud (thank you, Christina)

After some snacks, Jessica Reidy opened her workshop with a surrealist game on how playing with tarot cards could help open up insights into character development in narrative.  I got the Hierophant for a character I’m working on named Lou Cassin.  And then Jess presented the most wonderful class on how trauma narratives are expressed and described in literature.  Jess described how some of the key symptoms of trauma are indicated in narratives, and how different kinds of narrators–amnesiac, subterranean, and those of the endless present, describe and come to terms with traumatic events in their fictional works and personal essays.  Jess underlined the craft aspects of trauma literature by reading and analyzing “The terror years,” a poem, and “A Wedding in Auschwitz,” a story, by the Romani writer Rajko Djurić.

Jess’s class was followed by an outdoor session of yoga lead by the ever talented and graceful Elissa Lewis.  Rita & Norma took a moment to sneak out and rendevous with M. Marié in the beautiful 19th Century greenhouse on the Château de Verderonne grounds.  Afterwards, we caught Victor strolling with his guitar around the lawns in front of the château like some medieval wandering bard.  When he saw that there were some ladies spying on him from their rooftop balconies, he did what any good Romeo would do, and decided to serenade four Juliets at the same time.  M. Marié was very impressed by Victor’s superhuman ability to sing in French, English, and Spanish to three balcony windows at the same time.

It was a truly remarkable, and the flocks of birds seemed to enjoy Victor’s serenade as they flew over the château’s sun-dappled grounds.  The afternoon was peaceful and gorgeous until a loud pop was heard in the distance.  Was that a gunshot?  One of the Juliets asked, startled.  It seemed unlikely as Victor continued to sing.  Suddenly several meters behind him a flock of pigeons flew gracefully across the sky.  And then another loud boom.  And then the sight of a bird becoming startled and losing balance mid-flight.  It’s wings flapped hard once, then twice, and then it fell spiraling, like a smoking grenade, to the ground.  Someone had mentioned that pigeon stew was a popular dish France.  And it seemed strange that a day that began with the feeding of birds was punctuated so forcefully with the image of a bird being taken mid-flight so that it could feed us, too.

– Rita Banerjee, Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s Creative Director