Readings of Your Work: Final for 2017!

Final Prose Class for the Year with Helen Hagemann on Friday, 1st December @ 1pm. We will have two hours of  "READINGS OF YOUR WORK" with a coffee break in between. Please bring along your favourite piece to read for approximately 5 - 8 minutes. This is very good practice, as well as having others hear your work! Any member who has prose poetry, vignettes, flash fiction, script, memoir, children's story, a novel on the go, or some non-fiction are very welcome to join us. The cost for this "readings" session is $10 - to cover the cost of room rental. I hope you can join us!

Read More

Shifts in POV: J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy"

Workshop: Shifts in POV with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 17th November, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy". Writing exercises will look at shifts in POV from chapter to chapter and within a single chapter.  For those writing short stories this will also be a challenge.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however inquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

 


On The Casual Vacancy

For two years, the working title of the novel was Responsible, until Rowling picked up Charles Arnold-Baker's work on local government, Local Council Administration, whilst looking something up and came across the term "casual vacancy." The New Yorker questioned Rowling's original choice of title, and she remarked "This is a book about responsibility. In the minor sense—how responsible we are for our own personal happiness, and where we find ourselves in life—but in the macro sense also, of course: how responsible we are for the poor, the disadvantaged, other people’s misery."

One of the novel's major themes is politics. The Guardian referred to The Casual Vacancy as a "parable of national politics", with Rowling saying, "I'm interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society. We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it's quite a satisfying thing to do, isn't it?" Rowling was also critical of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition that had led since the general election in 2010 saying, "There has been a horribly familiar change of atmosphere [since the 2010 election], it feels to me a lot like it did in the early 90s, where there's been a bit of redistribution of benefits and suddenly lone-parent families are that little bit worse off. But it's not a 'little bit' when you're in that situation. Even a tenner a week can make such a vast, vast difference. So, yeah, it does feel familiar. Though I started writing this five years ago when we didn't have a coalition government, so it's become maybe more relevant as I've written." Rowling went on to say that Britain held a "phenomenally snobby society", and described the middle class as "pretentious" and "funny". 
^{Reference - Wikipedia}

Read More

The Bechdel Test: Friday, 3rd November with Helen Hagemann

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Workshop: The Bechdel Test with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 3rd November, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Virginia Woolf's short story "The Widow and the Parrot: a true story." The Bechdel Test now a benchmark in movies is also a testament to the influence Virginia Woolf still has on not just literature, but all modern art forms, and is living proof that her ideas live on even decades after her passing.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however inquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

The Bechdel test asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added. About half of all films meet these requirements, according to user-edited databases and the media industry press. The test is used as an indicator for the active presence of women in films and other fiction, and to call attention to gender inequality in fiction.

Read More

The Droste Effect: For your Writing

Workshop: The Droste Effect with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 20th October, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Delmore  Schwartz's short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities". Writing exercises will involve using the Droste Effect  to tell a particular story - of a story within a story, within a story, etc.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however inquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

The Droste effect (Dutch pronunciation: [drɔstə]), known in art as mise en abyme, is the effect of a picture appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear.^[1] The appearance is recursive: the smaller version contains an even smaller version of the picture, and so on. Only in theory could this go on forever; practically, it continues only as long as the resolution of the picture allows, which is relatively short, since each iteration geometrically reduces the picture's size. It is a visual example of a strange loop, a self-referential system of instancing which is the cornerstone of fractal geometry.

Read More

Prose @ Hubbles Yard Cafe

Prose @ Hubbles Yard Cafe with Helen Hagemann Friday, 6th October, 1pm-3pm. This is a critiquing workshop and the idea is to help writers who may have some flash fiction, a short story or novel/chapter opening that they would like others to comment on. All writers at different levels can participate and give brickbats and bouquets. (ie.constructive criticism). You can email Helen prior to class for distribution @ hagemann(dot)hele(at)gmail(dot)com or bring along on the day. 

Please note: Max 4 pages 1.5/2.0 spacing in Times New Roman font. Payment is optional as this is a school holiday class, but any amount is gratefully accepted for Helen's time.
Venue:   Hubbles Yard Cafe, 50 George Street, East Fremantle.
Meet for lunch at 12-12.30pm or order smaller meals /coffee at 1pm in the separate room that is provided.

Read More

Looking @ Tom Cox with Helen Hagemann

Looking @ Tom Cox with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 22nd September, 1pm-3pm.  Whether published or not this workshop is about promoting yourself as a writer on all social media platforms. Published British author and social-media guru Tom Cox will be our focus as a template. 
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs in the Print Studio.

Time: 1-3pm. What to bring:  Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad

Cost:  OOTA $25  - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save).  
Please note: For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

Tom Cox is one writer who uses all social media platforms to focus his writing, ie his books, his philosophy on life, family and nature. Mostly all of these areas are covered with his own personalised photographic record. His concerted efforts to self promote have gained him as many as 23.6K followers on Instagram, 69.3K on Twitter and 805,000 followers on Facebook (approx). Writing is not only about getting published or winning competitions but it is also about living as a writer and creating your own community, ie network. We can all do this now with the help of such mediums as Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, Wordpress and Instagram. All these platforms link to one another and are beneficial in the promotion of your writing, and your life as a writer. Class to read various blog-posts by Tom Cox that highlight, how as a prolific writer, he attracts attention through humour, the environment in which he lives, his basic home philosophy, and also his love of his pet cats.  Writing exercises will cover the same areas as this author.


Cox is a Nottinghamshire-born British author, now based in Devon. He has published nine books, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Good, The Bad & The Furry and Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia, his account of his year as Britain’s most inept golf professional, which was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year award. Between 1999 and 2000 he was the chief Rock Critic for The Guardian newspaper and went on to write columns and features for many other newspapers and magazines, before quitting print journalism altogether in 2015 to write pieces exclusively for his voluntary subscription website. He also hosts a monthly show on the experimental radio station Soundart. His new book, 21st Century Yokel - “a nature book, but not quite like any you will have read before” which crowdfunded in a record-breaking seven hours[4] - will be published by Unbound in October. 2017

Read More

Reflexive Writing: A workshop with Helen Hagemann

Workshop: Reflexive Writing
Friday 8th September, 2017.
Please note: Class will be held in the Print Studio.
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

In reflexive (self‐reflective) writing, you couple personal experience with careful observation and/or critical thinking about an aspect of your experience. For example, you might write about how you developed as a thinker, writer, or researcher; or how a particular process or event unfolded for you. The key is that this writing engages you. As well as sharing insights with readers, reflexive writing is increasingly becoming “an important component of intellectual work”. In many cases, self‐reflection is a means of argumentation in which you use your experience to make a point about the importance of a particular event, process, or form of knowledge. (Reference: SFU.CA)

Read More

Workshop: The Anti-Fairytale with Helen Hagemann

Workshop: The Anti-Fairytale with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 25th August, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Grimm's "The Fisherman and His Wife". Writing exercises will involve looking at the story in a modern context of turning it into "magic realism".
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however enquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

    An anti-fairytale, also called anti-tale, is a fairytale which, unlike an ordinary one, has a tragic, rather than a happy ending, with the antagonists winning and the protagonists losing at the end of the story. Whereas fairy tales paint a magical, utopian world, anti-fairy tales paint a dark world of nastiness and cruelty. Such stories incorporate horror, black comedy, mean-spirited practical jokes on innocent characters, sudden and often cruel plot twists, and biting satire. Examples of anti-fairy tales include "The Fisherman and His Wife" and "The Swineherd". The term is also used to refer to remakes of traditional "happy" fairy tales into "unhappy" ones. The Shrek film series, which parodies and satirises fairytales, includes several elements of anti-fairy tales such as the deaths of heroic characters and scatalogical humour.
  

  "The Fisherman and His Wife" is a German fairytale collected by the Brothers Grimm. Its theme was used in The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish, an 1833 poem by Aleksandr Pushkin. Virginia Woolf has her character Mrs. Ramsey in To the Lighthouse read a version of the story to her son, James. Günter Grass's 1977 novel, The Flounder, is loosely based on the fairy tale, as are Emanuele Luzzati's version, Punch and the Magic Fish, and Ursula LeGuin's novel The Lathe of Heaven.
It may be classified as an anti-fairy tale.
    Magical realism, magic realism, or marvelous realism is a genre of narrative fiction and, more broadly, art (literature, painting, film, theatre, etc.) that, while encompassing a range of subtly different concepts, expresses a primarily realistic view of the real world while also adding or revealing magical elements.
     Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fairy_tale

Read More

Workshop with Alice Nelson: 'Voicing the Void: Writing about difficult experiences'.

Workshop with Alice Nelson: Voicing the Void, Writing about Difficult Experiences. Friday 11th August 1-3.00pm at the Fremantle Arts Centre.
The theme around Alice's workshop is writing about difficult subjects (obviously not necessarily writing about trauma, but about topics, experiences and issues people may find it challenging to find a way to narrate). There will be some great texts to look at, a couple of exercises and encouragement to share your work.
Venue: FAC, Upstairs Room 2, No Booking Required
Time: 1-3pm. What to bring:  Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad
Cost:  OOTA $25  - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save).  
Please note: For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

Alice Nelson's first novel, The Last Sky, was shortlisted for The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award and was shortlisted for the Australian Society of Authors’ Barbara Jefferis Award. She was named Best Young Australian Novelist of 2009 in the Sydney Morning Herald’s national awards program. Alice works as a freelance journalist and teaches creative writing.

Read More

Writing about Nature: incl. Peter Cowan's "The Red-Backed Spiders".

Writing about Nature with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 28th July, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Peter Cowan's "The Red-backed Spiders". This workshop will introduce ideas on how we can write about nature in our short stories. The "feel good" or "prissy" approach to nature is often boring for the reader. Therefore, we will look at Peter Cowan's short story that includes the perverse and a "threatening nature" that aids tension, plot and suspense.
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, inquire about room at front desk.
Time: 1-3pm. What to bring:  Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad
Cost:  OOTA $25  - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save).  
Please note: For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

Peter Cowan is a quietly introspective writer, and consequently his intensity of vision and his scrupulous craftsmanship can easily be underrated. He has shown a particular talent for the short story or novella, in which he can focus on a single relationship and explore a single line of feeling. His stories, written in a spare, taut style, have as a recurring theme the relationship of a man and a woman seeking relief from their loneliness in sexual love. Cowan is intent upon an inner reality: his characters are seldom individualized very far; they seem almost anonymous, and the sensuous reality of the external world is only faintly felt. His imagination is compelled by a painful awareness of the feelings of loneliness and alienation that lie beneath the surface of commonplace lives; and in exploring this territory he has become, more than is generally recognized, a significant interpreter of Australian realities.

In his second collection, The Unploughed Land, he reprinted seven of his stories from Drift, along with six new stories, which represent a distinct advance in technique. These new stories include the much-anthologized "The Redbacked Spiders," a powerful story of a boy whose resentment at his brutal father leads to the man's death. The title story is an extended treatment of the pre-war country life about which he writes in his first volume. In its evocation of that life it is one of his finest pieces, and it marks the end of the first phase of his development.

Read More

Prose Class at Hubbles Yard Cafe

Writing at Hubbles Yard Cafe with Helen Hagemann Friday, 14th July, 1pm-3pm. This workshop will introduce the critiquing group and how we go about helping one another with our writing. Writers can participate with constructive criticism and also bring along a piece of writing. The last hour of the class will be creative writing exercises. Payment is optional as this is a school holiday class with no room availability at the FAC.
Venue:   Hubbles Yard Cafe, 50 George Street, East Fremantle.
Please note: Some of us are meeting at 12pm for lunch. However, the class will be held in a separate room to the main cafe, so you can still order a coffee/ cake, etc.

Read More

Syntax & The Sentence with Helen Hagemann

Syntax & the Sentence

Prose Class, 30^th June, 2017

This workshop will focus on breaking out of controlled syntax and sentence structure. Using Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, we will look at ways of unlocking the usual sentence structure of "subject/verb/object" and also ways of joining nouns with verbs to see what combinations we can come up with.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however enquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $20 - NON-OOTA $25 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

Read More

The Poetics of Space: writing about intimate spaces

The Poetics of Space with Helen Hagemann

Friday, 16th June, 1pm-3pm. This workshop is about taking a journey into intimate spaces, through old houses, dream homes, cellars, attics, verandahs, sheds, up stairs, under stairs, even where a whole house might serve as a portal to the imagination. Writers will read sections of Gaston Bachelard's text "The Poetics of Space" and writing exercises will ponder miniature spaces, the significance of doorknobs, even consider the houses of things: drawers, chests and wardrobes.
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however check at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $20 - NON-OOTA $25 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

Bachelard determines that the house has both unity and complexity, it is made out of memories and experiences, its different parts arouse different sensations at yet it brings up a unitary, intimate experience of living. Such experiential qualities are what Bachelard finds in the poetry and prose he analyzes. Home objects for Bachelard are charged with mental experience. A cabinet opened is a world revealed, drawers are places of secrets, and with every habitual action we open endless dimensions of our existence.  
      In "The Poetics of Space" Bachelard introduces his concept of topoanlysis, which he defines as the systematic psychological studying of the sites of our intimate lives. The house, the most intimate of all spaces, "protects the daydreamer" and therefore understanding the house is for Bachelard a way to understand the soul. 

Read More

Inspiration through Photography with Helen Hagemann

Inspiration through Photography will focus on several photographers including Juno Gemes (AU), Deidi von Schaewen (DE), and famous aperture photographers, Berenice Abbott (US), Walker Evans (US) and Eugène Atget (FR).
Friday, 19th May, 1pm-3pm. Instead of readings we will look at the various artists' works choosing certain photographs to write about. Writers may choose to bring a favourite snap or photo album as a desired alternative.
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Paint Studio, however check at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $20 - NON-OOTA $25 (ask for membership form to save.For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

Eugène Atget photographed the city of Paris and its environs obsessively for almost thirty years. He discovered a market for documentary photographs of Old Paris, which were bought by artists as source material for their canvases. But for Atget, the production of photographs about old French culture was also an occasion for making art.
   His photographs are unparalleled in their lucid realism and their lyrical response to the living pulse of the city and to artifacts that speak of human life in almost every social class. His images of parks, lakes, shop windows, vendors, prostitutes, buildings, sculptures, and street scenes of Paris go beyond mere documentation to a poetic version of a time gone by. Atget created some of the most beautifully articulated images of light and space ever made with a camera-an imaginary world. 

                                                                       

Walker Evans, more than any other photographer in the thirties and forties, defined the documentary aesthetic. For over four decades he used his camera precisely and lucidly to record the American experience. He is generally acknowledged as America's finest documentary photographer of this century.
   He attempted to show both the beauty of his subjects and the horror of the social conditions in which they lived. During the Depression, from 1935 to 1937, Evans took part in the most extensive photographic project ever carried out in the United States - the pictorial survey of the Farm Security Administration. The now-legendary collaboration with James Agee that resulted in the masterpiece Let us Now Praise Famous Men documents his dedication to photographing the country he knew. Evans's talented eye and sensitive heart make him one of the great photographers of this century.

 

Read More

Writing about Health: incl. Brenda Walker's "Reading by Moonlight"

Writing about Health with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 5th May, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of Brenda Walker's "Reading by Moonlight". This workshop will introduce writing ideas on health to help deconstruct our own experiences so that we can look more deeply into how health has affected the characters that we create on a day to day basis in our writing. If you have had problems with your health throughout your lifetime, this is a great area to draw from as there are many readers who will be able to relate. 
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, enquire about room at front desk.
Time: 1-3pm. What to bring:  Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad
Cost:  OOTA $20  - NON-OOTA $25 (ask for membership form to save).  
Please note: For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

Reading by Moonlight by Brenda Walker: A memoir of reading and healing

The first time Brenda Walker packed her bag to go into hospital, she wondered which book to take with her. As a novelist and professor of literature, her life had been built around reading and writing. Now she was also a patient, being treated for breast cancer, fighting for her life and afraid for herself and her family. But turning to medicine didn't mean she turned away from fiction. Books had always been her solace and sustenance, and now choosing the right one was the most important thing she could do for herself.

In Reading by Moonlight, Brenda describes the five stages of her treatment and how different books and authors helped her through the tumultuous process of recovery. As well as offering wonderful introductions and insights into the work of writers like Dante, Tolstoy, Nabokov, Beckett and Dickens, Brenda shows how the very process of reading – surrendering and then regathering yourself – echoes the process of healing.

Reading by Moonlight guides, reassures, throws light on dark places, and finds beauty in the stories that come to us in times of jeopardy. It affirms that reading can be essential to life itself.

Read More

Writing About Art (2) - Contemporary Impressionist, Daniela Selir

This workshop is a continuum of studying Daniela Selir's painting "Arts Centre Cafe"which is the subject for the City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards 2017. Most of Selir's work is contemporary, and as well, hints of a style by the old French Impressionists, including Renoir and Claude Monet. The Impressionist movement was characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.


Please Note: This Prose class on Friday 21st April will be held in the FAC's small cafe room of Canvas Cafe from 10.00am til 12.00 midday. This is because it is school holidays and the Arts Centre does not have a room for us. As well, some writing exercises will revolve around the "Arts Centre Cafe" which is the subject for the City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards 2017. A great opportunity to hone your skills looking at the ambience, structure and the sensuous aesthetics of the cafe, while perhaps having a coffee!  Critiquing group will meet after lunch.





CONTEMPORARY IMPRESSIONIST
A term used to describe works created by contemporary artists that share similar aesthetic qualities with those by the French Impressionists. Whether depicting urban environments or the natural world, all of the images that can be considered Contemporary Impressionist are rendered with loose, expressive brushwork and focus on the effects of light. Like many of the Impressionists, Daniela Selir finds peace and serenity in real places in the natural world. She has painted many scenes of a Billabong - one of her favourite spots.

Read More

Ekphrasis: Writing About Art workshop with Helen Hagemann

Ekphrasis: "Writing About Art" will focus on a painting by Daniela Selir (1994) titled "Arts Centre Cafe" with the option of entering the City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards. Friday, 7th April, 1pm-3pm. We will read short extracts of ekphrastic prose by John Ruskin, William Thackeray, Robert Rosenblum and in particular Homer's Bk 18 of the Illiad. Writing exercises will consider how to incorporate the "7" formal elements of art design in a short story.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Drawing Studio.
Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $20 - NON-OOTA $25 (ask for membership form to save). Please note: No credit card facility and new attendees who arrive without the class fee will be asked to pay on the day via direct debit transfer.
For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards - Now Open

Entries close: 14 July 2017

Entries are now open for the 2017 City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards, with more than $5000 in prizes on offer.
Authors can submit up to three stories. Entered stories must be inspired by, drawn upon, or use the theme of the artwork "Arts Centre Cafe" by Daniela Selir (1994), which can be found on the entry form.
Individual stories cannot be entered in more than one category, and must be original, unpublished, not have received an award in another competition, and not be under consideration elsewhere from the time of entry in the awards until the official announcement of winners.
To ensure anonymity, please do not put names or contact details on the manuscript. Entries are read ‘blind’ by the judge, and all entries must be accompanied by a completed and signed entry form. Entries must be type-written, double-spaced on one side only of A4-sized white paper, with pages numbered, and the story title on each page.
Email entries as an attached .rtf of word document to customer@rockingham.wa.gov.au with "2017 Short Fiction Awards: [STORY TITLE] by [YOUR NAME]" as the subject line OR post it in an A4 envelope to:
City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards
Community Development Officer, Arts and Culture
City of Rockingham
PO Box 2142
Rockingham DC WA 6967
Entry is free, and winners will be notified by phone or mail prior to the official announcement. The judge’s decisions is final, and no correspondence will be entered into. Any attempt to lobby judges or City of Rockingham employees, or influence decisions, may result in disqualification.

For further queries, please contact the Community Development Officer (Arts & Culture) on 9528 0333 or customer@rockingham.wa.gov.au.

Read More

Gothic: The Darker Elements - a workshop with Helen Hagemann

This workshop will look briefly at the Gothic and especially how to create those darker effects in your writing. Friday, 24th March, 1pm-3pm. We will read an extract from Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher. Writing exercises will look at the elements of the Gothic and its effect, particularly the effects Poe chiefly sought - terror, passion and horror. 
Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room 2.
Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $20 - NON-OOTA $25 (ask for membership form to save). Please note: No credit card facility and new attendees who arrive without the class fee will be asked to pay on the day via direct debit transfer.
For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website http://ootawriters.com

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is considered the best example of Poe's "totality", where every element and detail is related and relevant.
The theme of the crumbling, haunted castle is a key feature of Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1764), which largely contributed in defining the Gothic genre. The presence of a capacious, disintegrating house symbolizing the destruction of the human body is a characteristic element in Poe's later work.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" shows Poe's ability to create an emotional tone in his work, specifically feelings of fear, doom, and guilt. These emotions center on Roderick Usher, who, like many Poe characters, suffers from an unnamed disease. Like the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart", his disease inflames his hyperactive senses. The illness manifests physically but is based in Roderick's mental or even moral state. He is sick, it is suggested, because he expects to be sick based on his family's history of illness and is, therefore, essentially a hypochondriac. Similarly, he buries his sister alive because he expects to bury her alive, creating his own self-fulfilling prophecy.
The House of Usher, itself doubly referring both to the actual structure and the family, plays a significant role in the story. It is the first "character" that the narrator introduces to the reader, presented with a humanized description: its windows are described as "eye-like" twice in the first paragraph. The fissure that develops in its side is symbolic of the decay of the Usher family and the house "dies" along with the two Usher siblings. This connection was emphasized in Roderick's poem "The Haunted Palace" which seems to be a direct reference to the house that foreshadows doom.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_the_House_of_Usher

Read More