Thursday 28 August 2008

Well-Dressing and Beyond

The children's writing sessions at Bradwell mobile are now finished. Thanks to everyone who took part especially Natalie, Shannon, Abbie and Suwannee, who added a line in Thai to our Magical Mobile poem.

The last crop of this year's well-dressings is in progress. Recently I came across the one pictured here, depicting a village in Nepal. Residents of Great Hucklow are sponsoring Kanchha Babu Sherpa, a Nepalese medical student who is studying at Manchester Uni. There's got to be a poem in that. I'm trying to work on a sequence about water and well-dressing, inspired by this and by the report in last week's Guardian about the UK water footprint (4,645 litres per person per day when hidden factors are included).

Saturday 9 August 2008

Poetry Olympics

We were throwing the poetry javelins, and jumping the hurdles of rhyme and rhythm at Bradwell Mobile Library this week. I awarded several Certificates of Olympic Achivement. Acrostics were devised for some of the 33 Olympic sports (though Synchronised Swimming was a bridge too far) and a medal goes to Abbie (7) for this one:


Golf

Golfers on the green
Out of bounds
Lost and
Found.

A place on the podium for Shannon (11) for this advice:
How to Swim

Take arm-bands and a dive stick,
a blue swimming hat, lots of slides,
a friend, a spotty towel, goggles.

Don't take tears, a woolly hat,
chocolate, a black cat,
a walking stick
or a brick.

Choose a sunny day.
Mix it together.
Enjoy with chips and lemonade.

and to Eleanor (9) for this:
How to Cycle

Take:
a helmet
your bike
a sunny day
a pump for your tyres


Don't take:
rain
fog
a computer
spaghetti bolognese


Mix well.
Add a force of wind
and a nice breeze.
Serve with raspberry ripple ice-cream.

I'll be in Bradwell again on 20th & 27th August. See you there for more poetry action ...
P.S. 'Reading The Game' is the August theme for the National Year of Reading 2008