WRITING PROMPTS TO BENEFIT CHILDREN IN GAZA
UNICEF reports that in Gaza, “hundreds of thousands of children and families are caught in a catastrophic situation” and that, as of November 5th 2023, over 4000 children have been killed and more than 7000 have been injured “due to unrelenting attacks”, while a thousand others are missing. Outlining the charity’s Appeal for Children in Gaza, UNICEF spokesman James Elder explains: “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s a living hell for everyone else.” Elder has also called for “children held hostage in Gaza [to] be immediately reunited with their families and loved ones”. Recent updates state that “hundreds of thousands of children … remain trapped in a war zone with little or no access to food, water, electricity, medicine or medical care”.
For the duration of NaNoWriMo, we will be posting a writing prompt every day and in doing so, we are hoping to encourage our community to donate to charities providing medical aid to children in desperate need in this unprecedented crisis.
These prompts have been created by writers from Wales or with a connection to Wales and its magazines and presses. The prompts are on all kinds of subjects, but many are related to anti-violence and the work of empathy, and they are offered with the simple hope that they might encourage people to donate in support of medical aid in Gaza. We include a list of suggested charities to donate to below, highlighting the Appeal to Children in Gaza.
UNICEF “continues to call for an immediate ceasefire as 1.1 million people — nearly half of them children — in northern Gaza have been warned to move out of the way of a widescale military assault, but with nowhere safe for them to go”. Elder concludes: “The humanitarian situation has reached lethal lows, and yet all reports point to further attacks. Compassion – and international law – must prevail.”
Please see the list of suggested charities at the end of the post. A new prompt will be posted until at least the end of November.
Day 7: Zoë Brigley
Writing an Ethical Relationship
The title of the workshop draws on Audre Lorde’s famous essay ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power’, and the phrase, ‘The Erotic is a Measure Between’, is the title of a poem by Kyle Dargan which opens by declaring:
Your body is not my pommel horse
nor my Olympic pool.
If we think such a thing could exist, what would it look like if we were to write an ethical relationship between two people? This could be romantic or a friendship. It could be any kind of relationship which requires an ethical balance and respect.
Let’s write a poem like Dargan’s – except rather than saying what the body is not, let’s think about what the body could be if we were to enter an ethical relationship with another. We likely know that in real life there are institutional and cultural obstacles to this kind of relationship – maybe those are worth commenting on too. What practices would need to be done away with? What institutions would need to be reformed? What would have to change? But this exercise is also about dreaming and deep imagining.
You might want to think about the following questions:
- What would talk look like in an ethical relationship?
- What would physical interaction look like in an ethical relationship?
- What would support look like in an ethical relationship?
- What would the other person offer in an ethical relationship?
- What would you offer in an ethical relationship?
- What would togetherness look like in an ethical relationship?
- What does conflict look like in an ethical relationship?
- What would constitute a moment of togetherness in an ethical relationship?
Instead of saying what the body is not, say what it is, using an alternating list structure.
Your body is …
My body is …
If the possibility of this kind of relationship seems too far away right now to write with such immediacy or certainty, try writing in the conditional:
Your body would be…
My body would be…
Please consider donating to a charity providing medical aid in Gaza. We recommend UNICEF’s Appeal for Children in Gaza, but other charities include:
Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
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