On a Writer’s Imaginarium

Writer and artistbook maker Sarah Hymas reflects on an on- and offline cross-genre shared space she has created to support creative writing, and why this imaginarium is as much for her as for the other writers who join.


1,900 words: estimated reading time  = 7.5 minutes


Why is it we separate poets from writers, and writers from artists? Don’t we all make, create, draw our experience and ideas from the world into new forms? Aren’t we all inspired by each other, whatever the form or genre? Other people’s processes and imaginings offer new insights and routes into all my creative projects, however subtle or slow in emerging.

I don’t know how many years ago I saw Terry Gilliam’s film The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. I remember little about it bar the title and a sense of stepping into new wild worlds. Gilliam seems to be unrelenting in his creative vision, always pushing at the supposed bounds of reality. When I wanted a name to capture my ambition for a porous space of shared thinkingwritingdreaming, ‘imaginarium’ felt the perfect word. When I discovered that a toy shop chain and a special effects production company both used it for their names the idea was sealed.

The Imaginarium: an opening to possibility

When I ran the first series of A Writer’s Imaginarium I was actively thinking about how being very short-sighted, and not wearing glasses until I was six, affected my perceptual development, how I must have filled in so many gaps with guesswork. Not being able to see sharp edges meant my view of things was not contained. They weren’t contained. One of my reasons for writing, I think, is because I also felt I overspilled my physical self, and writing was and still is a placeholder for that excess. Imagination synthesizes all our senses. What we see we can also feel, hearing something we might visualise it.

Showing Sky photograph by Sarah Hymas
Photograph: Sarah Hymas © 2021

Vital as it is in connecting our relationships with the world, in the here and now, our imagination opens us all, short-sighted or not, to possibility, for rewiring how we perceive or think or want to perceive relationships between things, including ourselves. A Writer’s Imaginarium began as a way to feed my own practice. Sharing what I was reading, thinking and excited by helped me develop my own writing. It has become a similar container for discussing favourite writings and thinkings which become new terrains for new projects.

I write poetry, fiction, site-specific audio walks, creative nonfiction and ecocritical theory, and make artistbooks with and without text. These have all fed my interest in how form contains text and how subject shapes form. In its six-year life the Imaginarium itself has taken on many forms: online, in-person, six-month programmes, one-day sessions, a week-long on- and offline intensive, a solo guidebook, a month-long forum-based version planned for August, and who-knows-what shapes will rise in the future.

They all seek to create a space of imaginative exploration, a collective thinking, where projects can roam, without a map or too much of a plan. The basic premise for anyone interested in joining is that they have a writing project they want to sit with, play with, improvise on and unpack in some way. It can be in any genre; and either a really sketchy idea or super developed. The workshops ideally incorporate a good mix of genres for cross-pollinating the ways we shape the worlds we write.

This cross-pollination is perhaps more evident in the longer programmes, where a buddy system pairs up people to share process or work or ideas or whatever they decide, between the sessions. Buddies are changed on a monthly basis to encourage everyone to connect with everyone else. It’s intended as a nourishing system for book recommendations, making progress in tandem with someone, and talking all things writing related with an equally passionate other.

We’ve had novelists, poets, playwrights, memoirists, essayists, digital writers, live artists, genre-hybridists and who-knows-whattists pass through the various Imaginariums. There’s a real mix of how much people actually write on any programme. Some write x words a month. Others treat it as a tool-gathering opportunity to play with various drafts that they go on to develop after the programme. Still others treat it as a hothouse in which to complete an entire thing over its duration. And writing this post I think why limit the process to writers? A visual artist, musician or dancer might want to play with words within or around their own practice. It’d be fascinating to envelop other artforms into a programme.

A shared holding space

The Imaginarium: a shared holding space. Showing cave photograph by Sarah Hymas
Photograph: Sarah Hymas © 2021

Now more than ever it seems writers, publishing gatekeepers and all artforms appreciate that traditional notions of form or genre don’t necessarily serve the stories we need to write, read and share. We’re living in haphazard, uncertain and confusing times. As creative practitioners we essentially respond to that. A Writer’s Imaginarium is a holding space for unsafe and messy thinking, the sharing of ideas, processing how or what we write. So the discussion element of an Imaginarium is primary, which might rise from a reading or writing prompt. There’s never any pressure to read out. I don’t enjoy reading out the scrappy stuff freshly written in a workshop, and wouldn’t impose that upon anyone. I just want to chew around ideas, scribble some of them out, use other methodologies to my usual to find fresh ways into and through the terrain. Making up writing provocations is a joy — it allows me to unpack my own processes, map routes through passages I undertake spontaneously, and try new things out, before I suggest them to others. We need writers to experiment with new ways of perceiving the world, reworlding it through new and familiar forms, to keep our imaginations active, searching new pathways and bridges in the challenging times ahead.

The writing provocations in and out of the sessions are for people to try, taste and maybe return to or reject. Not everything works for everyone. One person described the six-month programme as being like “a curiosity shop … Full of hidden depths and surprises.” Some of those surprises might be more unpleasant than others. We can learn some interesting things through what makes us uncomfortable. Equally, we might not want to learn those things at that time. What’s for sure is that all prompts come from my love of visual arts, music, philosophy, the natural world, architecture, and on and on. An Imaginarium is not about producing a whole bunch of new work to present to others — although it can be if that’s what you and your buddy decide to do. It’s certainly about working out how you can best support a particular writing project. Who do you need to be reading, listening to or looking at? Where do you need to go for stimulation and nourishment? What habits will enable this particular project at this time?

Making the connections visible 

I offer a tutorial to everyone during or after the programme, so there is an opportunity for close discussion of writing. Of course I see feedback as important — as much for me as for the other. To read someone’s work closely enough to discuss it deeply is a connective and thought-provoking experience. It’s a sharing of creative preoccupations and a chance to unpack my current thinking that the writing in question prompts. How else do we come to read work if not through our own lived experiences and references?

I’ve been running writing workshops across my community for almost thirty years, for specific or more general groups of people, on loose themes or within particular projects, and I value how they make visible the connections we have with others (writers, humans, and all earthlings). The Imaginariums build on these sessions, and my work as a creative coach, to create new supportive networks for fictive, real, projected or speculative worldings.

Showing water photograph by Sarah Hymas
Photograph: Sarah Hymas © 2021

Each Imaginarium rises from the belief we’re writing for a future reader (ourselves or another), and aims to bring together the company of others who want to catch those sparks. Imaginarium formats have been shaped by specific project methodologies and also go on to inspire new ones. Whichever way round they work, they keep my imagination plugged into an evolving and ever-growing circuitry that feeds my practice, encouraging a spreading of theoretical, linguistical and creative impulses that shape my ambition and enjoyment of my writing. I hope that works similarly for others.


Find out more

You can explore the Spirit of the Imaginarium and its current and future versions at Sarah’s website.

Writer Ursula Le Guin — whose The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction considers fiction as a container and has featured in previous ClimateCultures posts on ‘disciplinary agnosticism‘ and objects of the Anthropocene — said that “I think the imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. I can imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination … The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human.” And in Ursula K. Le Guin on Redeeming the Imagination from the Commodification of Creativity and How Storytelling Teaches Us to Assemble Ourselves at her Brainpickings blog Maria Popova, says that “Le Guin observes that like any tool, the imagination requires that we first learn how to use it — or, rather, that we unlearn how to squander it. Storytelling, she argues, is the sandbox in which we learn to use the imagination.” And Popova adds that Le Guin said that this “self-invention … is not a solitary act — it takes place at the communal campfire where our essential stories of being are co-created and told.”

In Episode 5 of his Creativity podcast, writer John Fanning also picks up on the same essay as does Popova, and how Le Guin distinguishes between imagination and ‘mere’ creativity. He takes us back to the Romantics to suggest that imagination shapes our reality; indeed, for William Blake, imagination was reality, as he explained at age 20 to a patron who was dissatisfied with the ‘over imaginative’ illustrations Blake had created for his book: “I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.” As Fanning suggests, “Even the word itself, from the latin word, ‘imaginari’, asks us to question ourselves, because it means ‘to picture oneself’, to image oneself, to imagine oneself, which is perhaps a real understanding of creation, to investigate and picture from yourself, create from your images, your memories, your imagination, a visionary Blakean place where visions create mental concepts that are not actually tangible to the senses, but are there, present, nevertheless. Perhaps the best way to express all our creative world is the Imagination, just as the Romantics trusted…”

Sarah Hymas

Sarah Hymas

A poet, performer and artistbook maker focusing on the sea, its ecosystems and its interdependence with people, and the impacts of climate change and pollution.
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Attending to Muse & Nature in Lockdown

Artist Hanien Conradie shares the impulse and process behind a Covid19-lockdown collaboration that brings together image and text; and how, in a period of human silence, her muse and the natural world seemed to work in similar ways.


2,170 words: estimated reading time = 8.5 minutes + gallery


What does it take for distracted creatives to surrender to the cries of their muse’s desires? For some it is simple, they hear, they listen and they translate through making. But some of us academically trained artists scold the muse for her infantile ideas, her need to play and her seemingly inconsistent barrage of desires. And then there are some of us who ignore her voice year after year…

In my practice I work in locally found natural pigments and burnt plant material as part of an expression of climate change and my concern with loss as we head toward a Sixth Mass Extinction. The global ecological anguish and my personal heartache inform the colour palette of my work: earthy ochres and monochromatic black paintings. Black, as a colour of grieving in the West, is also a colour that represents infinite creative potential and has become more and more prominent in my films, my ritual work and my paintings.

Human silence & other voices

As the severe restrictions of the Covid19 lockdown isolated South Africans in their homes, I considered what artworks I could make from a small desk in my bedroom. For quite a few years I have been an active environmental voice, calling for a change in the way we relate to the natural world. Suddenly, because of the virus, the Earth gained respite from our feverish pursuit of money; our disregard for the effect we have on the rest of the natural world. At the same time, everyone became quiet and introspective and the sounds of the natural world became more apparent than before; and people noticed. It seemed to me that the Covid19 lockdown provided the perfect opportunity for humanity to reconsider the way we live. For the moment it felt like my quest for change was interceded by an outer manifestation that was so severe that it forced us to adjust our habits naturally.

Seeking the muse: Showing image 25 from Hanien Conradie's 40 DAYS series
40 DAYS – image 15
Artist: Hanien Conradie © 2020

Within the human silence of the lockdown, the voice of my muse became more insistent than before. I realized that the workings of my muse and the natural world were similar somehow and that less noise and distraction increased the intensity of my creative compulsions. The very uncertain and unprecedented circumstances swept away my normal, considered academic approach to my practice. I felt like breaking free from all my self-imposed limitations, obligations and preconceptions about what my art should be. I imagined that this is how artists might feel during times of war: the focus shifts from making work for others to making work because this is what I do to keep myself sane. I thus found myself surrendering to whatever my muse wanted to make.

I had recently been gifted a set of Winsor & Newton Artists’ Watercolours with 24 colours in a beautiful transportable black box. The new paint had my muse salivating and my hunger to make small brightly coloured paintings seemed vast and insatiable. Before the lockdown, I had planned to make on-site landscape portraits with them. This idea was in keeping with my practice of visiting and relating to living natural landscapes, but traveling outside of my home was prohibited during lockdown.

In addition to the delicious paints, my partner inherited an equally delectable collection of National Geographic magazines from his father. Whenever I saw their bright yellow spines I remembered the remarkable pictures hidden inside and my childlike delight as I pored over the magnificent mysteries of our existence through their pages. Since my muse was completely uninterested in working with the only ‘living’ places I had access to — the interior of my home or my small garden — I decided to page through the magazines. I started to mark any images that thrilled me without pondering their meaning too much. I have used this technique in the past to access my subconscious feelings. It turned out that many of the images I paused on featured lone human figures in extreme natural surroundings; environments where the human body cannot survive naturally.

Surrendering to the muse: postcards from lockdown

My burning desire remained to make miniature paintings in my brand new luminous watercolours. I happened to have a few books of Fabriano Postcard watercolour paper available. There was something about the postcard format that appealed to me: the hint of possible travel and its capacity to carry messages beyond my forced incarceration. In the past, I have always used the actual place or my own photographs as references to paint from. Making use of magazine images was a departure from my usual way and alarmed me somewhat. Sailing this close to mere illustration had my academic fine-artist-self protesting: ‘I have a reputation to think of’ and ‘the Gallery will expect more consistency from you’… I ignored this voice and continued to surrender to what delighted and motivated my muse.

Thus, I commenced a ‘vigil’ dedicated to creating in isolation and produced one painting a day over many weeks. The human silence in the first three weeks of lockdown was heavenly: no traffic, no airplanes, and a communal energy of quiet withdrawal in the air. The comforting solitude punctuated by the occasional ringtone or electronic alert mingled with birdsong, a frog choir and the roaring river close by. This symphony of sound was the perfect context for delicate and detailed painting. I felt happy and at peace as my muse took me on an imaginative journey to some of the most extraordinary and far-off places on Earth.

Showing image 18 from Hanien Conradie's series 40DAYS
40DAYS – image 18
Artist: Hanien Conradie © 2020

These places, in relation to the inner places I discovered during this practice, made me consider what best-selling author and former monk, Thomas Moore, says in his book A Religion of One’s Own. Moore suggests that as human beings we know a considerable amount about our external world and that, in comparison, we know very little (maybe too little) about our internal worlds. The images from the National Geographic magazines were mostly about discovering and exploring our external world — not only the Earth and space but also the microcosm. In hindsight, I came to understand that the images I selected were not random at all. They resonated with and expressed the internal states I experienced during lockdown. I became conscious of the inherent wisdom of my muse and subconscious mind.

I have since come to an understanding that periods of isolation are essential for humans in order to cultivate inner stillness. It is important to make time to listen deeply to one’s inner reality and to know its terrain well. In my experience this practice also sensitizes us to be more receptive to the ‘voice’ of the natural world.

When lockdown was finally over, I walked down to the river and it was as if I saw an old and dear friend again after a long time of absence. This little ecosystem on my doorstep was so much more magnificent than ever before. And I delighted in noticing that so much had healed and grown since I had last visited: in the vegetation and birdlife but also within me. This enchanting encounter resulted in another postcard series of 21 portraits of the river, titled ‘My Sanctuary’ (2020), which I made for a South African friend living in the UK.

40 nights / 40 DAYS

Allowing my muse to direct my creative process opened up a more spacious attitude to the flow of life in general and, more concretely, helped me to manifest my desires; in this case 40 small bright coloured paintings. I am now able to ‘hear’ and act on subtle prompts from my creative spirit. One of these ‘nudges’ that came to me was a dissatisfaction with the blankness of the backs of the postcards; where greetings and messages should be. Without text the 40 postcards from lockdown did not seem complete.

I recalled fashion-predictor Li Edelkoort’s podcast about the future of fashion design after Covid19. It was a brilliant talk containing some strange capitalistic approaches to the crisis that I found intriguing. I sent this off to friends and one of them, John Higgins, responded with a voice poem.

Showing image 7 Hanien Conradie's series 40DAYS
40 DAYS – image 7
Artist: Hanien Conradie © 2020

As a writer and academic, John has long been interested in the question of montage — in film, visual media and in writing. As lockdown took hold, John says he found himself, “like many people in the first phase of Covid19 and the ensuing lockdown … overwhelmed by the tsunami of media coverage … [and] at the same time, reading it obsessively as some form of comfort or distraction.” As something of an active response to the increasingly eerie situation, he began to assemble a number of montage texts from the various books, podcasts, news bulletins and online media available within his lockdown environment.

From the talk by Edelkoort, John selected key sentences and put them together in a montage that revealed the underlying philosophical questions in a very humorous way. I sent him a picture of one of my postcard paintings in response. The combination of the text and the picture revealed a fascinating new meaning, which was a delight to both of us. And, unashamedly, I found my muse asking John to join the project.

Thus two parallel projects commenced, each serving as an antidote to calm our anxiety during uncertain times. John created 40 texts and I painted 40 images, independently from each other. Each project maintains a distinct identity when seen in isolation. In my process I selected images from National Geographic magazines, painted them, and — together as a montage — they revealed something about my inner world during this time. One could say that the 40 paintings are reliant on each other to create the meaning (or full picture) of my exploration. John in turn brought together, and set against each other, fragments of national and international news coverage and commentary with other varied readings from his day; also illuminating his questions and thoughts in relation to the pandemic. The 40 texts John crafted can be read separately but are more potent as one long text that leaves one with a sense of the strangeness of the lockdown experience.

Once we completed our separate projects we carefully paired the texts with the paintings. This process took some time, but eventually we settled on some intriguing combinations: some that were easy to understand, and others that created discomfort and ambiguity.

40DAYS-003 image © Hanien Conradie 2020
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Since the images were painted on blank postcards, we decided to incorporate the text as part of each piece. On the reverse of the cards (where address and message are normally written), I give thanks to my inspiration by referencing the National Geographic ‘address’ of the image: the article title, edition, page number and the photographer. In the ‘message’ section of the postcard I ‘performed’ John’s text by transcribing them by hand. The final artwork is thus double-sided and consists of 40 painted images each with its own message on the back.

Because of the double-sided nature of the final work, it was difficult to display the text and painting simultaneously. To solve this, John and I created a printed book titled 40 nights/40 DAYS: from the lockdown. Here we present the text and image together at a glance. This is when what we describe as a ‘third work’ emerges through the viewer, who makes associations and assumptions based on the information gathered from both sources. One could say that the viewer becomes the creator in this ‘third work’.

Our short film presented here, is another attempt to bring this third meaning to life.

40 nights/40 DAYS is a playful project about serious things. We hope it will both delight and provide some solace in these extraordinary times.


Find out more

You can see a different selection from Hanien’s postcard collaboration with John in her contribution to our Quarantine Connection series from April-June 2020. Hanien Conradie: 40 nights / 40 DAYS appeared on Day 36. All 40 images that Hanien used for the series are displayed at her website, and the original paintings are available from the Everard Read Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. Contact ctgallery@everard.co.za for a portfolio.

Also available for purchase is the hardcover book, 40 nights/40 DAYS: from the lockdown. This can be ordered from Hanien at hanienconradie@gmail.com.

You can listen to the Business of Fashion podcast (27/3/20) featuring futurist Li Edelkoort, which triggered Hanien’s collaboration with John Higgins. The sources from which John took the textual fragments included media coverage from radio, television, and online sources such as Daily Maverick, The Guardian, the Washington Post and the New York Times; Li Edelkoort’s Business of Fashion podcast; and (dusted off and taken down from the bookshelves) Sir Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (T. Noble: London 1845); Plato’s Protagoras and Meno (Penguin: Harmondsworth 1956); John Ruskin’s Modern Painters Volume 1 (Dent: London 1935); John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (George Allen: London 1906).

Hanien Conradie
Hanien Conradie
A fine artist concerned with place and belonging, informed by the cosmology of African animism within the complex human and other-than-human networks that encompass a landscape.
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