This is quite a timely post; firstly, we are halfway through our summer workshop program with another week and a half to go, and secondly we’re celebrating one year since our blog was created by the Tidal Festival’s Get Blogging workshop facilitator, Hilary Burden.
Today we wish to share some writing by young participants who attended the My Word poetry workshop with award-winning writer Kristen Lang on Tuesday 19 January, 2016. Participants Leo, Olivia, Eva, Eloise and Grace drew inspiration from works in our current exhibition 40 Years of Collecting: DCC Permanent Collection to create several original poems.
Here is a selection:
Happily playing a piece of music
Smiling, fingers moving, hearing metronome tick
Tiddy the cat comes in meowing softly begging for milk
Then she jumps on the bed beside me, not the silk!
– Olivia Yeates (age 10)
A cloud in my head hovering nowhere
When happy it rises when sad it falls and starts to rain
When angry its thunder and lightening
When frightened it gathers and
When pride it spreads.
– Olivia Yeates
Image: Olivia (far right) reading a poem to the group.
An empty bed where the nurse awaits
To tell the family the dreadful fate,
For he died just today, with a stroke of pain
He toppled over on his cane.
Quickly he was tested
But unfortunately he’s rested.
– Eva (age 10)
When a small step breaks dismay will come
You fall off your path and stumble to find the right one
Then as hope disappears you see a bend
That leads you to the light at the very end.
– Eva
Image: Eva drawing inspiration from the Homes of Devon series of photographs in the exhibition.
It looks dark and blank
It looks like the horizon of the water
The water is drifting off into the dark and black
Swampy water of the polluted sea
– Leo (age 8)
Image: Leo pondering the work by Timothy Burns, The long night, the sound of the water, (1994, oil on linen)
As the forest of ferns sways in the breeze green as green
When the clouds turned grey
Then the sky turns bright
Then starts the fight
Lightning vs fire
Will the fight end no but only left the forest of ferns
Burnt as a crisp
As the clouds float away alas the forest of ferns black, dead and burnt
The forest of ferns is a mystery everyone will know about
As it will go down in history.
– Grace Fieldwick (age 9)
Image: Grace drawing inspiration from Edith Holmes’ The Bluff Beach, Devonport (1930-35, oil on canvas board)
“The Magic Passage”
There is a house with a spa and people used to live there
There’s lots of ferns and vines and stuff that we have never seen
Behind the wall of vines and stuff there is a special door
And inside is a place where wishes come true
They say it’s all a trick
For long ago a man went there
He was friends to the people who lived there
So he’s still there well that’s what they say
Though I cannot tell you what happened to him
Cause it might frighten you
But just to be safe
Do not go in that place
For there’ll be a curse on you
So if you ever be rude
You’ll die
– Eloise Fieldwick (age 8)
Image: Eloise finding a work to write about.
