Today we writers got out of dodge, taking the DART to nearby Howth: a harbor village immortalized by, you guessed it, James Joyce, in both Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses.
Fresh air, light rain, incoming tide, swarms of seagulls: just the respite from urban life that our students needed, and a great primer for our pending trip to the West.
At Howth we played simile scattergories, in which students raced to come up with original takes on familiar figurative constructions: warm as 9:00 a.m. bedsheets, for example.
Then we ate (arguably) Ireland’ best fish and chips, courtesy of Beshoff’s takeaway. Students spent the rest of the afternoon exploring, posing for moody seaside portraits, and writing stories, scripts, or poems that highlighted the figurative language they’d curated.
We are so excited to spend another day in Dublin before taking off for our three-day writers’ retreat. We are less excited about the fact that our time together is just about half over.
More soon!
– Veronica & Patrick





