Writing History with Pre-Loved Objects

A gilded artwork. A rusty hammer. A butter-smudged recipe book. Your favourite op-shop cardi whose previous wearer you’ve never met yet you can feel. So many objects close to us carry the traces of history. How can we connect with the past by connecting with things we hold, revere and love?    

Picking up an object can remind us that history is not only about facts and dates, but also about imagination, connection, and memory. In this workshop, you’ll be invited consider how objects – inherited or newly treasured – hold the trace of the times, places and person that have lived before us. Your facilitators will offer insights into ways to connect with the past by engaging with the materiality of history. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on and practice various methods by which to write unique histories via connecting with history’s ‘things’ at hand. How can objects activate the power of our imagination and intuition? How might they queer or subvert official histories? What latent memories can they release? And what kinds of responsibilities do these objects ask of us?

Your facilitators will share their own experiences, challenges and satisfactions in writing history through its material traces. Participants will come away with methods and exercises by which they can bring objects into vivid, multi-dimensional life; methods by which to write and shape their own history.

Topics covered:

• Objects as mediators of your history and its traces
• Writing embodied connections with the past
• Writing the past for the present

Your co-facilitators:

Coming from scholarly Creative Writing and History backgrounds respectively, both Bonny and Nadia have used material and embodied methods to write their personal and settler family histories. They’ve also both written history experimentally, drawing flexibly on genres including poetry, non-fiction prose, historical fiction and essay to create works of different form, length, purpose and tone. 

Dr Bonny Cassidy is the acclaimed author of three collections of poetry and one book of nonfiction. She’s attended residencies and festivals worldwide and has written on Australian literature and culture for over a decade. Bonny runs The Understory, a school for writing and narrative therapy. www.bonnycassidy.com

Dr Nadia Rhook is a writer, historian and educator, and the author of two history-themed poetry collections: boots and Second Fleet Baby. Nadia has delivered workshops for various writer’s festival and community and school groups. and has been researching and publishing history for over a decade. She’s currently living in Ballarat and writing about stone, medicine, and parenthood. http://www.nadiarhook.com/

* Please note that early bird ticket purchases are greatly appreciated, as this event needs a minimum number of participants to run.

Image credit: Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons