It is World Poetry Day on 21st March and poetry is something that forms a component of many of our projects. It also popped up recently at a Cocktails in Care Homes party when they celebrated Burns’ Night.
Our recent Arts & Ages project, Map of Me, used many different art forms. As part of the work pairs (one primary school student paired with one older person from the community) created poems together by writing and cutting out lines of poetry to make a joint poem. The same collaborative technique was used to create a group poem for the final sharing which took place in December 2018:
“Heart & Mind
Everything feels ready
Open my heart open the door
And unlock the levels
Look up and see the stars
Shining bright in the sky above
The wonder of the moon I love
My heart is like the radiating sun
I am happy, wishing, anxious and shy
My head is like a spider
Working hard to build her web
Trapping words and spinning stories
In my mind there is a landscape of
Infinite imagination
Twists and turns, climbs and descents
In my heart lives the mountatins,
The flowers too
The mountains move me, so do you.
I am the heart and mind, two
Combined
Beating fast, beating slow
How I love you so.”
The impromptu Burns’ Night poetry session at George Mason Lodge took a similarly collaborative approach the dashes at the beginnings of lines in the poems below show where a new hand took over the poem:
Poem One
-Some hae meat and canna eat
-Let’s get that whisky flowing
And those rosey cheeks a’glowing!
-The haggis is a treat
On Robbie Burn’s night we meet
-Let’s all dance a do
Some Kayleigh
& not end up at the Old Bailey.
Poem Two
-Auld nature swears, the lovely dears
-Over the craggs, far away
But we can see we’ll be there one day
-A cold crisp walk in the snow
Over the hills & away we go!
-The leaves on the tree, they grow
some long, some short
-It has been cold recently, hands
tucked in pockets…
-and all wearing hats & scarves
waiting for the snow
Poetry and spoken word elements have often formed part of our Women’s project (which we have been running for 15 years). In this year’s In My Name project participants worked on a number of creative writing elements including an extended session with African Jamaican Dubpoet, D’bi Young Anitafrika.
Photos above are from the workshops that formed part of the In My Name project.
Some beautiful spoken word elements formed part of Where the Heart Is (from 2012) and Soundtracks (from 2007).
Photo above is from Where the Heart Is