Start 2019 with some Café Writing! Join me for six weekly sessions of inventive prompts, ideas and lots of encouragement, not least being fuelled by Ludlow Kitchen’s exceptional coffee and cake! This will the third series of Café Writing at Ludlow Kitchen. I love teaching this course, always a joy. Continue reading Start 2019 with Café Writing!
This spring I’ve been working with a great group of people who’ve been attending ‘Creative Writing in the Museum Vaults’. Ludlow houses the county’s precious and extraordinary Museum Resources, and this series of workshops allowed us access to the ‘Vaults’ and the wonders they contain. Throughout all of this we were expertly supported by Ludlow Curator Abigail Cox, and by Fay Bailey at Shrewsbury Museum … Continue reading Words from the Vaults
Recently I spent two wonderful days at Hellens Manor, in Herefordshire, providing poetry workshops to local primary schools for Ledbury Poetry Festival. Ledbury PF have an acclaimed community and schools outreach programme, and Hellens Manor is a marvellous place. Chloe Garner, artistic director of Ledbury Poetry Festival, did a wonderful job welcoming and enthusing the children – a real effort aimed at demonstrating that poetry … Continue reading In the darkness/ a bird makes its nest
I’m just back from a most inspiring and exciting week at The Hurst, tutoring a band of marvellous young poets from Hargate Primary School. My co-tutor, Wajid Hussain, was just great to work with, and he has a lovely manner with the children. The staff from Hargate are just exceptional, and they worked their socks off encouraging and supporting the children, who are only 10 … Continue reading Shy Snowdrops & Trees Upon Trees
Cafe Writing is once again under way in lovely Ludlow Kitchen at the Food Centre, Bromfield. I run these workshops for people who wish to write poetry or prose while enjoying a good coffee, and sometimes a pastry too. This morning a dozen ingenious minds created a Dicsaurus. I had asked everyone to invent a new word using two words handily hanging around the beautiful … Continue reading The impact of a distinguisher at a vaseboard
With four rather marvellous collaborative class poems completed by Much Wenlock Primary School (South of the Severn) and Redhill Primary School (North of the Severn), I went back in to work with the children on creating individual poems. We did this by using their original Poem Notes, made outdoors, plus prompted writing I’d done with them after their trips – and then we developed these ideas … Continue reading Two Sides of the Severn 2
My involvement in the Impressions of the Past project continues! A big, varied group of families and individuals from the local community converged to meet ceramicist Ruth Gibson and I in Pontesbury a couple of weeks ago. We all walked up through the green lanes and footpaths to Poles Coppice. Ruth got everyone making clay impressions, and I handed out Poem Notes booklets. We set off … Continue reading Out of an owl’s eye
Since Christmas I’ve been working on Two Sides of the Severn, a project funded and managed by Wenlock Poetry Festival to help primary school children enjoy, access and create poetry. The project will also assist the established poetry festival in Shropshire to develop and encourage young audiences, and it’s funded through a Clore Poetry and Literature Award. The power plant was far, at night, red-eyed … Continue reading Two Sides of the Severn 1
I’m very excited to say I’ve got funding for a new project, which will take place this autumn. It’s called ‘In woods we forget things, at the wood edge we tell stories‘ – click for a blog which will document our progress. The project is funded by Shropshire Hills AONB and Shropshire Housing Group, and many many thanks to them. The project will provide opportunities for three … Continue reading ‘In woods we forget things, at the wood edge we tell stories’
It rained on Welshpool Poetry Festival, but didn’t dampen this great little celebration of words in Mid Wales. I read with Gillian Clarke on the final evening, and am now wallowing in the delights of her new Picador Selected Poems. But before that I ran a workshop for children. Here’s a few pics and some very promising lines from a group of focused and inventive … Continue reading ‘Around the Crow the weather’
