Creative Writing Program organized by CIU-CEC
The Creative Writing Education Program, organized in cooperation with Cyprus International University – Continuing Education Center (CIU-CEC) and Department of Turkish Language Teaching, started with Prof. Dr. Gürkan Doğan's seminar on "Language, writing and creativity".
The program will take place between December 9, 2022 and January 09, 2023, and in addition to local writers and poets Salamis Ayşegül Şentuğ, Senem Gökel and Assist. Prof. Dr. Mihrican Aylanç, it will be Vice Rector Prof. Dr. Gürkan Doğan who will carry out the program. There will also be workshops where Emrah Öztürk and Fatih Yalıner will demonstrate using examples.
Prof.Dr. Gürkan Doğan delivered the program’s first lecture
On the first day of the program which was geared to address the students in the Department of Turkish Language Teaching, Doğan explained the productive transformative structure of language which is acquired through the processes of thought, communication and creation by using examples; he also mentioned the correlation between language capability and thinking and reasoning skills that makes the human language unique and open-ended.
Doğan emphasized that language makes it possible to express oneself and to be persuasive; and pointed to the experiential and linguistic nutrition needed for this with examples. He also mentioned the connection between writing and understanding, and then talked about the happiness one feels when talking about things fully comprehended, as well as the happiness that comes along with the extraordinary things that are an integral part of life.
Doğan also made the students question the source of people's unhappiness and lack of self-confidence by citing Ahmet İnam's book "On the Fine Things in Our Lives." Calling the continuity of man's search for finding one’s self and redefining one self as "life", Doğan said that language has the potential to help people reach persons who they are unlikely to come across.
Language is the product of the need to be understood!
By associating maturation, which is effective in the writing process, with the realities in perception, and conveying the development of the perception skill with examples through daily life practices and various works, Doğan underlined that language is the product of the need to be understood and the need to feel, and spoke about the structure of language that turns into a building system that produces abstract meanings.
Doğan stated that by experiencing life, they would enrich their thought processes, and through literary works and film productions which are based on life itself, they can get to know people and thus discover the path to writing.
Poetry is the art of getting rid of words with words!
Doğan stated that poetry is “The art of getting rid of words with words.” He prepared the students for the creative writing process by explaining the importance of having a word to say in order to create a poem that meets the need for expressing oneself aesthetically, he used some sample poems.
In the coming weeks, the program will continue with workshops focusing on Salamis Ayşegül Şentuğ's "Creativity and metafiction" and Senem Gökel's "Creative imagination in poetry". The program will be completed with the workshop applications using “journey to the world of character creation and experimentation” as the central theme.
At the end of the program, participants will receive a certificate of participation.