Precious Pljevlja
Saturday 12/19/2009 6:07 AM
For the last several weeks, I've held a creative writing workshop at the American Corner here in Podgorica, and we've had as many as 15 participants at a time, which is the size I was hoping for. The Podgorica group has been wonderful -- I've had the chance to get to know the most consistent attendees, and their enthusiasm and dedication have been really inspirational. Though I applied for a creative writing position through the Fulbright, I've been teaching a "Speaking and Writing English" class to students in their final year of studies and an "Academic Writing" class to post-grad students at the Insitute of Foreign Languages at the University of Montenegro. Those classes have been a new experience for me because I don't really have any experience teaching English as a Second Language and it's been a while since I taught "academic writing" as an upper-level course. It was pretty easy to get to know my UM students, too, since the classes I'm teaching are so small, which has been a really rewarding experience, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to come to Montenegro and teach anything at all, but I didn't realize until I started holding sessions at the American Corner how much I've missed teaching creative writing.
Earlier this week, though, the US Embassy sent Alex and me to Pljevlja, a smallish town in northern Montenegro, to run a two-night creative writing workshop at the American Corner there. Pljevlja reminds me of a slightly larger version of my dad's hometown, Negaunee, Michigan: it's small and hilly and home to at coalmine and thermal powerplant, and it seems to be surrounded by woods. I couldn't find much information about it before we left: even though it's Montenegro's third-largest city, my Lonely Planet Montenegro guide only mentions it in one sidebar (on p 145) as a "detour" destination one shouldn't bother attempting to pronouce (the "l," I'm told, is "soft," and the "j," of course, should be thought of by Americans as a "y") after crossing the Tara Bridge (a famous bridge spanning the canyon), and a web search doesn't reveal much more about it. Our visit there, however, was one of the high points of our entire trip for both of us.
The embassy arranged for a driver to pick us up from our apartment and bring us to our hotel three hours away. Despite the ROCK FALLING OFF THE MOUNTAIN incident on one of our earlier treks, I offered to rent a car and drive us up there, but I'm glad that plan didn't work out. For the last half of the trip, we were on winding, snow-covered roads, most of which hadn't yet been plowed because this was the beginning of the first snow of the season. Once we got there, we found that our hotel was pretty snazzy, with a flat screen TV (which Alex is watching in this photo) ...
and an elaborate shower that allowed water to come out of the showerhead, the shower ceiling, or a series of spigots on the shower wall. Unfortunately, when I turned it on the first time, still fully clothed, for the water to heat up, it was set for the water to come out of the spigots in the wall, out the shower door I was standing in front of, and drenched me and my clothes.
The school building itself is over 100 years old, and I wish I’d taken more photos of it. There was some incredible student artwork on display at the main entrance, and the architecture was pretty cool. When I arrived, I was honored to be allowed to use the “teacher staircase” on my way up to the second floor. Evidently, the students have to use alternate staircases during regular school hours. As I was going through photos, I thought at first that this was the teacher staircase, but now I’m thinking that it might not be: I took this photo on the second night, and I don’t remember the teacher stairs curving like this. But we can pretend: here is the “teacher staircase”:
Once Vesna and Davorka, the American Corner coordinators, realized how many people were planning to attend the workshop, they moved the location from the actual American Corner to the high school library. When I’d met with them earlier in the day, they offered to make 50 copies of the poems I was planning to distribute that night. I thought they were being too optimistic, but I still spent some time at the hotel reworking my intimate “write a poem and then read it so we can all talk about it” approach to the workshop into a presentation on poetry writing and a series of metaphor-creating, poetic-line-writing exercises. And it’s a good thing I did: we still didn’t have enough copies of the poems for all of the participants. There were between 60 and 70 people there: kids Alex’s age, high school students, teachers, college-age and beyond adults. That's a phenomenal turn-out for this type of event on a large college campus … certainly not the numbers I expected in this little mountain town near the borders of Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Here are some photos Alex took during the workshops:
According to Vesna, they were pretty concerned about having to write and read what they’d written … terrified, actually. But after the first five or ten minutes, they seemed eager to participate, respond to questions I posed, and call me over to see one-on-one what they’d created. And before long, they were standing and reading in front of the entire room. Here are some photos Vesna and Davorka took during the workshops:
It was so rewarding to see their excitement about their own writing – I have to say, it even trumped the pride I see in most American students back home. I think it has everything to do with creative writing not being taught here in the schools … and in Podgorica and Pljevlja, anyway, there aren’t even opportunities to do this sort of thing outside of school. It’s not that they don’t value literature because these kids are better-read at the high school level than many college students in the States. It’s just that creative writing isn’t recognized as something that should be taught … or that people would be interested in learning. But these groups at the American Corners are proof that students (and non-students) here are downright hungry for this sort of experience.
To make things even better, it was snowing in Pljevlja … as in, it started snowing sometime on the day we arrived (or maybe before then) and it didn’t really stop until the day we left. Here are some photos from our (warm and cozy) hotel window on the first night:
On Tuesday, our second day in town, Davorka graciously braved the weather to take us on a short tour of the sights in Pljevlja, which included the Hussein Pasha Mosque. Davorka even called ahead to have someone meet us there so we could go inside. It’s the main mosque in town, but, if I’m remembering correctly, there are 4 or 5 others in Pljevlja too. Here’s Alex at the entrance:
And the main dome inside:
The US Embassy donated funds to help restore the shadrvan:
Afterwards, we took a taxi to a park at the edge of town, up a wooded hill, and to the Holy Trinity monastery. Here are some views of it:
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Back in town, Davorka also pointed out the best place to get Alex’s beloved cevapi, which we revisited after the workshop that night:
On our way back to the hotel, Alex had a chance to play in the snow (this second picture isn’t all that flattering, but I love the expression on the face of the guy behind him):
And I took several pictures of this cemetery in the snow ...
So it’s safe to say that Pljevlja won our hearts: we met some great people and truly felt at home from the moment we arrived. Though our time there was far too brief, we’ll never, ever forget it.
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