This is my favourite thing! I find it completely inspirational to work in words with other people of all ages. I'm a professional member of NAWE with experience of working with schools, providing workshops at festivals and developing writing projects with various different groups of adults in the community.
Some recent projects have included:
Viewpoint Voices Project with National Scenic Areas
Over a year, I worked with the National Scenic Areas Officer. We invited groups of people with a strong local connection to a National Scenic Areas Viewpoint (so that's all along the shore of the Solway in Dumfries and Galloway between Caerlaverock in the east to Gatehouse of Fleet in the west) to walk with me and then write about each of these special places.
Groups from many different backgrounds and of many different ages came out on this staggeringly beautiful coast (in all weathers) - and created some extraordinary work. Have a listen. The Ward Law work was done by 17 and 18 year old Advanced Higher English students from Lockerbie, Langport and Sanquhar.
And this work at Palnackie was done by a U3A group from Stewartry.
And at the extraordinary location at Gutcher's Isle, this was the work of 17 and 18 year old Advanced Higher English students from St Joseph's in Dumfries.
Writer in Residence at Dumfries & Galloway Science Festival
I had a wonderful time being Writer in Residence for Dumfries & Galloway Science Festival in May 2012, providing workshops for children. We wrote 'Science Fiction in a Flash' and published it in nanoBOOKS (invented complete with copper wire and coloured insulating tape binding), and my drop-in Poetry Postcards workshop, which took a science inspired look at the world.
This little girl was 6 years old, working with English as her 2nd language. She wrote:
The salmon dreams in the stream.
I saw the fish in my sleep.
Beach Poet
In June 2012 I spent a couple of days working for World Oceans Week Celebrations as their Beach Poet. I had to gather my own punters by parading through the marquees with a large badge and a signboard, which was a tad demanding to think about, but actually ok to do. Poets have always had to tout.
I gathered a surprisingly large group of kids aged 10 to 14 or so, lots of whom lived in Port William and knew the beach like the back of their hands. I asked them where were the best places to find interesting 'treasures', and they took everyone there on one of the most gloriously shiny days the Solway can deliver. We lifted boulders and caught small green crabs with soft backs, which the kids explained were the pregnant females. Someone got nipped.
I stopped to exclaim at a fantastically barnacled limpet, which just for a moment I'd thought I could lift up. Then it clung tight. The lads explained how to sneak up on a limpet. 'You only get one chance'. They demonstrated too, and someone got their finger squeezed fiercely.
We gathered seaweeds, live crabs, dead crabs (one was very, very dead, and even the kids deemed it too smelly to write next to), a heavy metal bolt, very corroded, a seaworn piece of hosepipe that had turned almost into ceramic, driftwood, shells, Oarweed...
Then into the shade of a tent to read some sea poetry by Russell Hoban, Kevin Crossley-Holland and more, then we took up my little created-for-the-purpose Beach Poetry booklets, and got stuck in.
Viewpoint Voices at Knocktinkle
This project took place in the village of Gatehouse of Fleet for Day of the Region in October 2011. The project was supported by National Scenic Areas Officer Anna Johnson.
A lively group of Gatehouse residents gathered for poetry workshops with the intention of using the Fleet Valley National Scenic Area viewpoint at Knocktinkle as a starting point for a series of short poems in cinquain form. We spent two evenings working on the ideas and the poems and were able to record the 'voices' of the poets reading their work, and exhibit this for Day of the Region in early October.
We were looking for ways to mark the local and particular, and I am delighted to have been involved, and so impressed with the quality of the work the group produced.
Poetry Week at Closeburn Primary School
I worked with every class in this lovely rural school during a week of celebrating poetry in March 2011. With the youngest children I read Animal Poems – we acted them, found poems where the children could all respond together on a repeating line, chose ‘best bits’, laughed, and listened.
The ‘middle’ classes were magic – I introduced them to Strange and Scary Poems, the kind where things lurk in sheds, where a face grows in your wardrobe door, where the wind gets up and you can’t sleep… We got up and moved around and spoke lines in groups, developing a whole poem in choral speaking, and everybody spoke.
Then they wanted to write a group poem, which they did with me scribing for them on the whiteboard. They were hugely inventive, and showed natural appreciation of rhythm and pace, making subtle choices about syntax and tense. It was about a very alarming dragon, by the way.
The ‘middle’ classes were magic – I introduced them to Strange and Scary Poems, the kind where things lurk in sheds, where a face grows in your wardrobe door, where the wind gets up and you can’t sleep… We got up and moved around and spoke lines in groups, developing a whole poem in choral speaking, and everybody spoke.
Then they wanted to write a group poem, which they did with me scribing for them on the whiteboard. They were hugely inventive, and showed natural appreciation of rhythm and pace, making subtle choices about syntax and tense. It was about a very alarming dragon, by the way.
The children wrote with huge energy about these worlds created in their imaginations – but we found the time to work on drafting, very quietly, or in conversation with a friend or myself. We went for rhythm, and a sense of strangeness, noticing where rhyme and half-rhyme arrived naturally but not forcing the issue. We thought about endings, and discussed how to make the unexpected...
At the end of the week I went along to a whole school assembly where the children read out their own work, and work by the week’s favourite poets and then performed the choral poems I’d introduced them to. They had done some cross artform work too, creating illustrations for poems, and movements for them.
‘Making Our Mark’ – a cross-artform project at Dunscore Primary School
‘Making Our Mark’ is a dynamic collaboration led by an artist, and involving a poet (me) and the wider school and village community. The project was granted the maximum award of £10,000 from the National Lottery for funding to creatively redesign Dunscore’s school grounds, with an additional £2000 from 'Determined to Succeed' funding. The funding application was supported by Dumfries & Galloway Council and the project is being led by nationally renowned D&G based artist Matt Baker, who is also a parent at the school.
‘Making our Mark’ has been based on pupils’ ideas and input, with the intention of designing an outdoor classroom area. The aim has been to encourage play, understanding and appreciation of the local environment. The project has also encouraged ecological and environmentally friendly opportunities.
The involvement of staff, parents and members of Dunscore village community, including local ‘experts’, has played a key part in the planning, development and implementation of the project. In 2010 I led a ‘Poetry Survey’ of the school grounds with the children, exploring their particularity, their stories, their meaning to the children and their families.
Artist Matt Baker led the way on the development of the children’s plans, and in spring 2011 asked me to come back into school to work with the children to write some poetry to be carved by Matt onto stones in the outdoor classroom.
Poetry in our Playground
I worked with the P4/P5 class on two mornings. I took the class outside to listen to sounds from the playground, and discuss what can be seen. I talked to the children about the local placenames and the first Dunscore school here over a hundred years ago. Based on this I worked with the children to create a draft group poem. The second session was spent editing the group poem. I helped the children to decide on the shape of the poem, where the line endings should go, where the rhythm needed one more word to help it flow, or where a better word could be substituted.
I worked with the P4/P5 class on two mornings. I took the class outside to listen to sounds from the playground, and discuss what can be seen. I talked to the children about the local placenames and the first Dunscore school here over a hundred years ago. Based on this I worked with the children to create a draft group poem. The second session was spent editing the group poem. I helped the children to decide on the shape of the poem, where the line endings should go, where the rhythm needed one more word to help it flow, or where a better word could be substituted.
The final part of the process was to select words and phrases from the group poem – the ‘gems’ and the ‘wow words’ – which the children want Matt to carve onto the stones in the outdoor classroom.
Here’s the finished group poem:
Here’s the finished group poem:
Horses and cattle leave prints
in the soft ground.
Wiggly worms turn leaves into soil.
They come up as the children play.
The birds sing to me
and I sing to the birds.
I see the postman delivering
in his red van.
Clip clop go the horses
down to Mansegate, neighing all the way.
Children walk down to the loch to play,
watch swans swim.
At the edge of Dunscore School
rough dirty cement for now.
One day a grassy classroom
where we'll play and learn.
The rocks are all ploughed out.
They're hard to sit on, good to jump on!
in the soft ground.
Wiggly worms turn leaves into soil.
They come up as the children play.
The birds sing to me
and I sing to the birds.
I see the postman delivering
in his red van.
Clip clop go the horses
down to Mansegate, neighing all the way.
Children walk down to the loch to play,
watch swans swim.
At the edge of Dunscore School
rough dirty cement for now.
One day a grassy classroom
where we'll play and learn.
The rocks are all ploughed out.
They're hard to sit on, good to jump on!
The ‘jewel’ words chosen by the children to be carved onto the stones were:
Cattle leave prints The birds sing to me/and I sing to the birds
Clip clop go the horses/down to Mansegate a grassy classroom
hard to sit on good to jump on!
Clip clop go the horses/down to Mansegate a grassy classroom
hard to sit on good to jump on!
The children have since worked with Matt and chalked their words onto the stones by the outdoor playground, choosing which stones for which words – they really are ‘making their mark’.
