Poetry Adventures!
I love adventures! For me, poetry is really exciting because it can lead us to places we’ve never been before and take us on many different journeys, painting a richness of ‘word and sound pictures’ along the way.
Poems don’t have to rhyme and can be constructed of sounds and movement as well as words.
Boom! Boom! Whoosh Whoosh! Zing, Zing! CRASH!!
Lifting a poem off the page is a bit like directing a film or play. Films and plays are not only made up of words but scenery, sound, drama and action. The story comes off the screen or stage. Poems can come off the page to meet us in a multi-media and exciting way! In my sessions, the children and young people themselves become film directors!
The workshops are unique because the participants, themes and subjects change, as well as the different interpretations.
To each session and setting I take a wide variety of sensory materials which the children or young people can feel, hear, touch, see and talk about, then decide how they can be used to ‘Lift the Poems Off the Page’.
Fabrics with a wide range of colours, textures, materials and sizes.
Musical instruments including drums, tambourines, bells, and xylophones as well as electronic instruments to create atmosphere, including a ‘Soundbeam’, ‘Skoog’, ‘Makey Makey’, synthesisers and C.D.s.
Props include torches, bubbles, bubble wrap, puppets, costumes, hats and wigs, tissue paper, sand, shells and jelly.
The poems are both written beforehand and also created by the children and young people themselves on the day.
My first 2019 session at Worthing Library was a Saturday afternoon’s ‘Story Magic’ and part of the Workshop was about bats. We also created a night time scene with a full moon, stars made from shining torches and a landscape which the bats flew across. We wrote our own poem using words suggested by the children and young people.
The second session was on the theme of ‘Under and Over the Sea’ with pirates, mermaids, fish, dolphins, undersea castles and pirates’ treasure chests filled with jewellery and coins.
Frances, Ethan and others from the Library Team made colourful cardboard fish and jellyfish with ribbon streamers, which the children used to enact life under the sea.
Beforehand, I had trays of sand with shells which everyone could feel and cubes of jelly to create the sensation of a jelly fish.
We sang a song about Pirates (lyrics also being poems) and finally walked the plank which was made from brown wrapping paper.
Together we read poems about pirates and some children created a moving picture of the pirates on the island.
Using a very large piece of blue fabric, adults held the corners and moved it over the children like waves, whilst they swam with the fish and jelly fish underneath. We voiced sea words and sounds to make it a ‘multimedia’ poem.
In Durrington Library with children from the Primary School, we worked on the theme of ‘Journey into Space!’
The children used the resources I’d taken to create a spaceship, aliens and a moon’s surface. We read some space poems – including an Alien poem – and created sound effects including some with a mini synthesiser. Another group used musical instruments to produce the sounds of stars.
Whilst they were working, they thought of space words which we wrote on cards and stuck on a board, then read them out as a completed poem. This became their very own ‘Space Poem’.
Here it is:
Journey Into Space!
Scrunching, crunching, moon boots.
Twinkling, floating.
Icy gases.
Whoosh!!!!!
Lonely, huge ears.
Shazam!!!
Stars on fire.
Whoosh, Kaboom!!!
Dark echo, eerie.
Wham!!
Slimy Alien.
Zappers.
Green, rainbow colours.
Creeping Aliens run away!!!!
S C A R Y !!!!!!!
Actions, sounds, items and the way we give meaning to words by the way we read them, makes poetry exciting and a wonderful way we can all express ourselves.
Any theme is possible as a subject or idea for poetry.
At home you could try creating poems with things in the kitchen, items in the garden or a box of ‘all sorts’ which you could pull things out from at random and see what happens!
It’s creative, it’s interactive, it’s good for us – it’s FUN !!!
Recent and future sessions include Manor Green College in Crawley, Fordwater School and Chichester Library as well as Lyminster Primary School and Littlehampton Library.
Themes include sensory experiences, journeys, jungles, bubbles and Circus!
With special thanks to ‘Wellspring West Sussex,’ ‘Fit Well and Connected’, the W.S.C.C. ‘Family and Wellbeing Library Service’ and ‘The Big Lottery Community Fund’ , through whom I’ve been able to take these ‘Lifting Poetry Off The Page!’ adventures to a variety of groups and settings across West Sussex.
Chris North 2019
Poems don’t have to rhyme and can be constructed of sounds and movement as well as words.
Boom! Boom! Whoosh Whoosh! Zing, Zing! CRASH!!
Lifting a poem off the page is a bit like directing a film or play. Films and plays are not only made up of words but scenery, sound, drama and action. The story comes off the screen or stage. Poems can come off the page to meet us in a multi-media and exciting way! In my sessions, the children and young people themselves become film directors!
The workshops are unique because the participants, themes and subjects change, as well as the different interpretations.
To each session and setting I take a wide variety of sensory materials which the children or young people can feel, hear, touch, see and talk about, then decide how they can be used to ‘Lift the Poems Off the Page’.
Fabrics with a wide range of colours, textures, materials and sizes.
Musical instruments including drums, tambourines, bells, and xylophones as well as electronic instruments to create atmosphere, including a ‘Soundbeam’, ‘Skoog’, ‘Makey Makey’, synthesisers and C.D.s.
Props include torches, bubbles, bubble wrap, puppets, costumes, hats and wigs, tissue paper, sand, shells and jelly.
The poems are both written beforehand and also created by the children and young people themselves on the day.
My first 2019 session at Worthing Library was a Saturday afternoon’s ‘Story Magic’ and part of the Workshop was about bats. We also created a night time scene with a full moon, stars made from shining torches and a landscape which the bats flew across. We wrote our own poem using words suggested by the children and young people.
The second session was on the theme of ‘Under and Over the Sea’ with pirates, mermaids, fish, dolphins, undersea castles and pirates’ treasure chests filled with jewellery and coins.
Frances, Ethan and others from the Library Team made colourful cardboard fish and jellyfish with ribbon streamers, which the children used to enact life under the sea.
Beforehand, I had trays of sand with shells which everyone could feel and cubes of jelly to create the sensation of a jelly fish.
We sang a song about Pirates (lyrics also being poems) and finally walked the plank which was made from brown wrapping paper.
Together we read poems about pirates and some children created a moving picture of the pirates on the island.
Using a very large piece of blue fabric, adults held the corners and moved it over the children like waves, whilst they swam with the fish and jelly fish underneath. We voiced sea words and sounds to make it a ‘multimedia’ poem.
In Durrington Library with children from the Primary School, we worked on the theme of ‘Journey into Space!’
The children used the resources I’d taken to create a spaceship, aliens and a moon’s surface. We read some space poems – including an Alien poem – and created sound effects including some with a mini synthesiser. Another group used musical instruments to produce the sounds of stars.
Whilst they were working, they thought of space words which we wrote on cards and stuck on a board, then read them out as a completed poem. This became their very own ‘Space Poem’.
Here it is:
Journey Into Space!
Scrunching, crunching, moon boots.
Twinkling, floating.
Icy gases.
Whoosh!!!!!
Lonely, huge ears.
Shazam!!!
Stars on fire.
Whoosh, Kaboom!!!
Dark echo, eerie.
Wham!!
Slimy Alien.
Zappers.
Green, rainbow colours.
Creeping Aliens run away!!!!
S C A R Y !!!!!!!
Actions, sounds, items and the way we give meaning to words by the way we read them, makes poetry exciting and a wonderful way we can all express ourselves.
Any theme is possible as a subject or idea for poetry.
At home you could try creating poems with things in the kitchen, items in the garden or a box of ‘all sorts’ which you could pull things out from at random and see what happens!
It’s creative, it’s interactive, it’s good for us – it’s FUN !!!
Recent and future sessions include Manor Green College in Crawley, Fordwater School and Chichester Library as well as Lyminster Primary School and Littlehampton Library.
Themes include sensory experiences, journeys, jungles, bubbles and Circus!
With special thanks to ‘Wellspring West Sussex,’ ‘Fit Well and Connected’, the W.S.C.C. ‘Family and Wellbeing Library Service’ and ‘The Big Lottery Community Fund’ , through whom I’ve been able to take these ‘Lifting Poetry Off The Page!’ adventures to a variety of groups and settings across West Sussex.
Chris North 2019
