November poems on way...

November poems coming soon: funny, exciting, thoughtful, atmospheric... and probably funny again.

Fireworks will feature, but also those autumn leaves again, now showing their true colours at last just when everyone's given up on them and started shovelling them into the compost bin; and those trees, left bare and shivering without their precious coats of many colours. There might be the odd nature walk, or may be just a stare out of the window at the unremitting gloom - but no, we'll have to get out there at some point to get that first batch of Christmas cards bought in ready - and the stamps, if we can afford them any more; and after all that, a well-deserved breath of breezy, bracing November sea air! Well, I might leave that one to you, actually. All that and more will be popping up in one rhyme or another, and on one page or another, through November. So keep a weather eye out - a bad weather one, I suppose, unless global warming suddenly bursts upon us... hmmm. So, leggings on, fingerless keypadding gloves at the ready, and all hail November!

Shadows and shivers...

The room is growing darker by the second; the twilight outside is now brighter than my still and silent house. A murmuring gust sets leaves a-quiver on the overhanging fronds of weeping cherry; no cheery-red here, though, only the blood-red glow of poisonous berries to guide the cautious eye round the lugubrious gloom of the garden. Beyond lurks the eerie grey of dusky hillside, sinking, shrinking in the grasp of devouring night. But hark! What do I hear? A gasp... a shriek... footsteps upon the path... a booming KNOCK! at the door...

Not already! Bother. Was hoping to make my escape before the first sweet-hungry gang turned up. After all, I haven't even got any sweets to give them: at my age, and with my teeth, sweets just don't feature on the shopping list. Last year I braced myself for the eggs and flour, but this year... I mean, the kids are all a year bigger, aren't they, and more numerous, and I'm a year older and duller and, okay, scareder. Think I'll sneak out the back way and jump in the car. What's more, I'll don a disguise too. For once, I don't object to the idiotic design of my gigantic cagoule hood...

Ha-ha! My trick! My treat! I'm off to the supermarket for some teabags, and - who knows? - perhaps even a Hallowe'en doughnut to dunk on my return... if I return... perhaps there is something about the darkness tonight...

A forest of nature poetry...

Nature-lovers, and those preferring more thoughtful poetry, here's a break from today's frivolous Hallowe'en fun with some solider stuff on my Nature page (added below the rest).

As you'll see, I love trees! Everything about them makes me want to write about them, especially the effects of wind and sun on their movements, sounds, lights and colours.

But there's something beyond all that to be found in trees too. To me they make statements: their tall, splendid dignity speaks:  their presence can be felt across a field, watching, contemplating, bearing the highs and lows of the world on their arm-like branches.  Some offer solace, peace and serenity, wisdom even, drawn from decades, perhaps centuries, of watching over us all. But they they have their melancholy sides too, of course, especially come late autumn, when we watch them shake their sad, fraying heads as they shrink helplessly into those pitiful, forlorn old creatures, though even then, some will remain defiant, bracing ice and snow with tight-knotted muscles, or simply melting the chill with their grace. Ah, but there are those, too, whose winter stance we find less reassuring: those, like my 'Wicked Winter Tree', that loom suddenly up out of the mist, bearing down with grabbing arms and clawing fingers as we hurry home in the half-light. 

But if trees actually were conscious beings, they would find us the creepy ones, with our axes and chainsaws and our ever vaster and faster clearance strategies, not to mention our hydraulic drills and bulldozers, our tarmac and concrete and bricks and mortar and traffic and fumes and... 

Perhaps that's why I want so much to celebrate trees.

Horrid Hallowe'en chants...

Anyone disenchanted with Hallowe'en may like to magic them away with a chant or two from my poetry pages. See latest murky offerings here.  One or two on kids' page too, or if you'd rather be spooked, see Wicked Winter Tree on my Nature page.

More chants and spells materialising on this spindly strand of our spidery world-wide web as Hallowe'en advances upon us, especially if I can magic its cursed power to work a bit better on my laptop.

Teachers - Firework poetry ideas - updated

For any teachers planning poetry-writing sessions, or topics related to fireworks in any way, over half term, I've finally ground to a stop in my lengthy spiel on the subject, having reached the end of my sample session approach on For teachers page.

There's even more I could have droned on about, of course, such as how I prompt for expressive and adventurous imagery, and encourage its development, or how I might open out the firework theme in follow-on poetry, or use the session's output to produce a performance, display, song, piece of music, dance, story, or combination of all these - time and facilities permitting.

Poetry opens so many doors, through which children can find their own personal ways of developing and expressing themselves! Yet a poem itself can be so small and simple, a child can hold it in their hand, see the whole of it at a glance, hear it in their heads, learn and recite it, gaze at it on the wall, and when they stop and consider that they wrote it, up goes their self esteem, and their zest for attainment all round.

I hope, actually, that you teachers are not planning as I type this, but allowing yourselves a bit of precious recuperation time. I see, in every school I visit, how nonsensically overburdened today's teachers are. How would you all survive without this tiny half-term oasis? Firework poetry will go off with a bang whichever which way it's lit... except in the rain. (I'll be posting a poem about that scenario soon, hoping it doesn't come true.)

In sympathy with those bailing out today...

Here are the words to a song I made up last year in sympathy with flood victims. Sadly, those words seems to apply again today. 



Floods are a pain!

We're used to bad weather.
We're used to the rain. 
We're British: we bear it - we barely complain,
but floods, floods, floods are a pain!

Showers are fine.
Storms we don't mind.
We don't need the sun to shine,
but floods, floods -
at floods we draw the line!

Mud round the TV, the settee, the chair,
the cooker, fridge, freezer - everywhere!
Door-to-door, floor-to-floor, up the stair,
a flood of raw sewage, doom, despair!

We're used to bad weather.
We're used to the rain.
We're British: we bear it - we barely complain,
but floods, floods, floods...
are a PAIN!



Please note: I don't mean that we bear the weather because we're British, per se, but simply because we're all too used to our mind-numbingly miserable weather.

All material on this site is by me, Kate Williams.
Copyright: Kate Williams. All rights reserved.

Tragedy in the UK today

However much warning we have of high winds, it's never enough to prevent tragedy, it seems. While I and many others woke to a surprisingly calm morning, horrors were happening just over the horizon, I now discover.

Thinking of those whose lives have been suddenly cut short, and of their families and all those in mourning, and all others suffering the misery of the storm I was so very lucky to miss.

More silly weather rhymes...

Just to say - more silly weather rhymes are now available to browse here. See Humour for latest, plus Gardening for further frivolities, if in need of a splash of cheer in this gale-force gloom.

More to come later, hopefully, depending what else the rising howls inspire - at the moment they're inspiring an uncomfortable awareness that it's turned incredibly gloomy and somewhat breezy in my living room, proving that our efforts at insulation have failed... and that I've left a towel on the line: oh well, too late now - a handy gift for next door!

Gales may bring mayhem, but they also bring great rhyme fun! Why not concoct your own as you huddle by the fire with your cuppa - before the power goes off and the heating and cuppa options vanish in the wind?

Laughing in the wind - rhymes to fly...

See Humorous page for a bunch of light, silly, blow-away rhymes to throw at this wind, and to sail in autumn generally. More coming later in the day.

Meanwhile, take care, and keep away from anything that could be blown onto you, e.g. walls, roofs, trees, wobbly balconies, dilapidated bay windows, scaffolding and builders' debris, and the like. I had a roof slate fall on my shoulder once, and even that wasn't nice.

Teachers: Fireworks poetry update

My fireworks poetry-writing session plan has now been updated. See For teachers for further steps in building ideas, words, confidence, enthusiasm, zest for creativity...

Please note that these are just my methods. Yours may be different in all sorts of ways, and just as effective, but it's always handy to swap notes and ideas, isn't it?

I've been developing and fine-tuning my approach for a number of years now, and learning ways of adapting and stretching them in different directions to suit different circumstances.

Children do seem to come alive in the workshops, and teacher and pupil responses confirm this. (Feedback comments can be found on my other website, poemsforfun.wordpress.com - Workshops.) Above all, I think it's a matter of my enthusiasm (which tends to bubble over rather!) rubbing off.  I'm not sure where it comes from - it fizzles out in a flash at the sight of the kitchen sink or the ever-rising paperwork pile or the supermarket shopping list. Most inconvenient at times! But I just love the workshops! As I'm not a teacher myself, I don't have to tick any boxes, write up any notes or turn the results into a wall display or anything, which also helps those bubbles!

Any comments on the session ideas? Please get in touch!

Tips for teachers page - new!

Teachers! I've just opened a new page, dedicated to you!

Thinking of a firework poetry session with your class? View my introduction to firework poetry-writing to spark ideas for the process, or to add some extra sparks to the fantastic flare of ideas you already have!

Suggestions for poetry styles, formats and approaches coming soon.

Would a workshop help? See details at bottom of your page.

Meanwhile, well done for surviving the first half of term, and have a great, well-deserved half-term break!

Together we await the winds

Ironically, the grimmer the news, the more it pulls us together and strengthens the community. By now most of us in the UK are aware of the wild storms forecast to hit our watery little islands on or around Sunday night. Street by road by lane, across the cities, towns and villages of Britain, we watch the latest on our TV sets, tune in to our radios, click on our computer updates, and hold our breath. Each of us, hurrying home from work or nipping to the letterbox or just popping outside with the bins, stops a moment to look, listen, feel, to think ahead, to plan. Together we anticipate.

Before today's hi-tech weather predictions and communication systems, people had none such advanced warning to heed, of course, nor to share. They shared a myriad other things that we don't; their communities did not need such dramas to pull them together. Nevertheless, there is something unique and momentous about this feature of 21st century life that offers a few drops of compensation for such losses, and in a way our ancestors could never have envisaged.

While I, safe within my four walls, here in south Wales, listen to the first low sighs and whimpers of this approaching gale, for instance, I know that my friends and relatives and acquaintances and colleagues will be doing the same - every one of them - in odd moments, around my village, up in the Welsh valleys, over the Severn Bridge and up through the Midlands, and down through the west country, too, and across in the hubbub of London, and over in the flat, exposed east, and up round the coast to shivery Newcastle. I know that they, too, will have stopped to focus a moment on at least one of those very same maps and charts and arrows and bars and warnings and updates and comments that have caught my eye. It's a safe bet, too, that as the storm strengthens and its sighs rise to howls, the phone wires will start rattling, texts flying, emails shooting here, there and everywhere: from all round the country, our individual four-walled sanctuaries will be converging under one swaying, battered umbrella, as we check up on each other, swap notes, laugh, sigh, gasp, console. For the duration of the storm, from its first prediction to the last reporting of its aftermath, it will hold our fragmented existences together in its power: not unlike Hallowe'en, I suppose...

unless the forecast turns out to be wrong, which would be good news all round, of course, except for that momentary, invisible, intangible, ephemeral little community pull.

Workshops for schools

I've just added some information for schools to my Contact and For kids pages.

I've provided about 1,500 workshop days through the past 13 years, for children of all ages, abilities and backgrounds. I've worked in nurseries, primary schools, secondary schools, state and private schools, pupil referral units, and libraries. To date these have been in Wales, southern England, the Midlands, London, and Nottinghamshire. Most of my workshops are for primary schools, where I work with children from age 3 upwards.

I'm a member of Authors Abroad, mostly working with either able or reluctant writers gathered together from a number of schools. I'm also represented by Literature Wales, and have provided sessions for their able writers' squads around Wales. In addition, I'm included on The Poetry Society's list of recommended writers for schools.

I offer a choice of themes for each term, sometimes altering them a little at half-term. For November and December my topic choices will be:

Fireworks;  Leaves (and trees);  Lights & Colours.
I restrict choices to just one per day, as I can't get my head - or arms - round more! But for each one I provide a stimulating array of pictures, toys or artefacts, support poems, acting out activities, and for younger children, a word-building song with classical guitar and an action-rhyme to clap and act out. I also provide my own worksheets, graded for all levels and set out in attractive, informal presentations with lively illustrations.

Fees vary depending on distance. Details on Contact page.

Feedback can be found on my other website: poemsforfun.wordpress.com - Workshops.

I find every workshop an adventure, although each is carefully planned, and often previously tried and tested. My enthusiasm seems to rub off on the children too, the only real problem tending to be pursuading them to stop writing at the end! A child once told me, at the end of a session: "I loved that, and I HATE poetry!"

Performances for adults
(humorous, unless a preference stated for serious or a mix)

Details about my performances for adults will follow soon, though you can probably find all you need by checking the information on the Contact page and at the bottom of the other pages here, and then by following the links.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch!

Teachers - firework poetry ideas on the way...

Hello teachers!

I expect your schools are all turning orange with rolling pumpkins this week, or dark and sparkly with Hallowe'en creatures. So how about an autumn potion in poetry form to add to the fun? It'll provide an ideal rounding-off activity before the break, or an irresistible half-term home-work task! I've jotted down a few ideas on various recent posts, so take a peek!

As for Bonfire Night, what could fire up minds more? One of my firework poems is up ready, on my 'For kids' page, to help set the ball rolling, and I'll be looking out more over half term, along with some tried and tested poem formats with examples and prompt suggestions - so keep an eye out!

For poetry-writing ideas on autumn generally, again have a browse through my posts. I've been a bit autumn-obsessed this year, so there's no shortage of autumnal poems and ponderings here!

Winter poems to follow... Every day, now, the leaf colours are deepening, aren't they, taking one's breath away at every fresh sighting..!  Yet I'm already anticipating the next thrill: bare branches against bleak winter skies. Yes, there'll be winter poems and poetry-writing ideas to follow!

Meanwhile, the other pages here may provide some light relief while you're working away!

But first of all, enjoy half-term!

Neighbouring cat poem

Hello gardeners...
Following my earlier posts today, this is just to say that my poem, 'To a neighbouring cat', is now up on my Gardening page. 

You might also like a glance at 'One to none chat at the dentist' on my Humorous page.

More poems coming to all pages soon.

A halo of light for Hallowe'en?

Candle-light versus cauldron-fright

Hallowe'en is derived from All Hallow's Eve (or Evening) - eve of All Hallows or All Saints Day, as we know: a time of candle-lighting, no doubt: a day for brightening up the encroaching dark of winter and celebrating the good things in life. We pursue the idea today with candle-lit pumpkins and, soon after, with bonfires and fireworks to light up foggy skies, but perhaps we could stretch the centuries-old glow further still, and the warmth and welcome of its gentle light.

Is it not time to move on from Trick or Treat before it loses its sense of fun and fantasy and sinks into the muddy waters of dressed-up begging? Would it not be more fun, positive, and socially acceptable to bring our focus back into the kind, old candle-light? Bring back the lamps and lanterns, the tapers and the oil lamps, and let's get celebrating, rather than scouting for sweets!

How about a picture poem, too, to set the scene?

Poems don't have to rhyme, of course, but if rhymes are required, there are plenty to be found in that dusk-warming candle-light:

light/bright/delight/night/twilight/sight; glow/ago/show/blow/go; warm/storm/ lamp/damp; red/bed; gold/cold; yellow/Hallow (ish); cheery/dreary; rosy/cosy; calm/balm; spark/dark; shiver/quiver; lantern/phantom (ish),
to list but a few.

A haiku would fit well in a candle flame shape (3 lines: 5, 7, 5 syllables respectively); individual words could speak out from the cut-out features of an illuminated pumpkin face; a dialogue would flow compellingly round the outlines of two or three faces together; and lantern-shapes would offer straight writing lines at all angles - ideal for swinging!

Needless to say, candles, oil lamps and all fires and naked flames involved in a flame-focused Hallowe'en would require suitable safety measures. I'm just heating up some ideas!

More poetry possibilities to light up the dark soon.

More grim sides of gardening...

Nature or nightmare? Wild or just weed? Pet or pest?
More garden moans...

Why did I bother getting down on hands and knees into 2012's muddy sludge on all those miserable occasions? Why did I bother trying to carry out that silly vision of mine: trying to clear the ditch at the back of our garden and conjure up a sweep of colour in such a corner? Why did I bother battling with those brambles, bracing myself to the stinging nettles, thrusting fingers and thumbs into those thorny bushes time and time again? Why on earth did I fork out on all those packets of pansies - even if they were '3 for 2' at the supermarket? Why did I make any attempt at all to bring such an unnatural feature as colour into that soggy, brown stream-bed, against all the odds, only to have it instantly drowned out by the usual weeds, floodwater, and - yes - cat mess? And read mess in the plural - the multiple, please. That of next door's beloved, I'm talking about, and he's just deposited another to greet me on this bright, fresh autumn morning! 

Last year the creature drove me to scrawl a rhyme about it, which I'll be putting up on my Gardening page soon; this year I'm past poetic comment; next year I'll let the ditch just be a ditch, and save my energy for shovelling.

Cats indoors are a different kettle of fish, of course, as are weeds in fields, and garden dreams in heads.

Are frogs, toads & wizened oldies really so spooky?

Is Halloween (or Hallowe'en as it used to be) outdated? 

Do we really want to encourage our children to shudder at endangered creatures - at our precious frogs, toads and newts? Even spiders have their place in the world, and that's hard for me to acknowledge, as a spider-dreader. Even vermin deserves human respect, however we may need to control it. Animals are animals, whatever their features and habits, whatever threats they may pose. And let's remember, we use rats and mice for invaluable scientific experiments for the sake of human health and welfare. Why? Because, in certain ways, they resemble us. We're linked, as we are with everything. Science has taught us things we didn't know in Medieval times; don't we need to teach our offspring accordingly?

As for witches and wizards? Take away the quaint old 'magic' concept, and they're poor, wrinkled old dears like I'll soon be, and if we want the next generation to respect wildlife, we cross our fingers that they'll respect us oldies even more when time comes to call on their care! Even the dark, murky weather that we associate with Hallowe'en is precious. Indeed, autumn is the favourite season of many of us, and has even acquired the status of a girl's name.

Autumn may cast shadows and blow chill winds, but it also offers golden light through golden leaves: autumn holds us in a fragile, ephemeral aura like no other.

So let's be sure to pass on to our children the wonderful side of autumn, as well as the weird, over Hallowe'en, and to lead ways in celebrating, rather than scorning, the fragile and fascinating, the venerable and vulnerable, the slanting, slipping shades of our world!

Teachers! Autumn recipe continued...

Back to my Recipe for an Autumn Potion (see yesterday's posts)...

Here are some ideas for the next stage of your poem, after writing up all those quantities and ingredients.

Method:

First, let children have fun selecting cookery instructions, such as:

mix/stir/fold/blend in, beat, whisk, mash, sieve, bake, boil, simmer, fry, roast, chill, freeze, decorate.
Rhyme time? There are many simple and amusing rhymes to be found in such instructions, especially with a few prompts and guidelines. Here are some examples:

beat it/eat it; roast it/toast it; mash it/bash it; grill it/chill it/distill it/kill it(?!); whirl it/hurl it, bake it;shake it.

How about a bit of slap-stick too? Here are some ideas to spur more:

fill it/spill it; drop it/mop it; pat it/splat it; boil it/spoil it; shake it/break it; smack it/whack it; sip it;tip it.
Leave to set, but where? After all the snappy fun and slapstick comedy, a new wave of mystery, linking in with those intriguing ingredients (see yesterday's posts) would be a thrill. Set ideas rolling with a few mind-boggling suggestions:

On top of a cloud (and what sort of cloud?)? On another planet (what sort?)? In the flare of a firework spark? On top of or under a tree (again, what sort?)? In a different region (jungle, desert, ocean, pole, magic land?)? In a different century or millennium? In something abstract, such as a dream, memory or mood? Or just under a pile of leaves (what sort?)?
Serve with?  A side of chips (for comic effect)? Or something weird and wonderful, in keeping with the qualities of autumn?

Artwork: an illustration would enhance the finished recipe, of course. Individual or group work, though? Card-sized or classroom-sized?

Music: finally, how about setting - or helping your class to set - a group recipe to music? The result could be sung, clapped, percussion-accompanied, and performed with accompanying actions... Ah, but it's half term, isn't it, or almost: time I left you in peace!

What sound words do children choose?

Street Sounds -
which ones ring bells for youngsters,
and what noises do they compare them with?

I recently spent a day in a primary school, running poetry workshops with 7-9 year-olds on the theme of Street Sounds: a noisy, busy, bubbly day, and interesting too. Not just for the children - though I did my best to ensure that it would be - but for me too.

Noise for boys? Although I had predicted beforehand that some boys would choose quiet sounds for their poems, and some girls noisy ones, it was interesting, and pleasing, to observe such clear demonstrations of non-stereotypical choices as I witnessed today. Time and again their sound choices confirmed the lie that boys prefer the one, girls the other. Even more interestingly, perhaps, a few boys gradually switched over from so-called 'boys' topics', such as quad bikes, racing cars and bin lorries, to quieter ones, such as autumn leaves, rain, and mice, but only after they had deafened the rest of us with their impersonations of those roaring beasts and, it seemed, shown us all that they were indeed 'tough-guys' or 'proper boys'. What, I wondered, had planted in them that need to establish their boyishness in that way? The girls mostly seemed more relaxed about mixing violent and gentle, not needing to make a song-and-dance about either, though some seemed to opt consistently for the gentler concepts. Did they, too, feel the pull of some social constraint?

A dark influence: more interesting still - though in a distressing way in this case - was the frequency with which they boys used war imagery to describe loud sounds. Lorries and such like were as noisy as 'a bomb', 'a nuclear bomb',  'World War III', or 'a gun'. But what else can we expect, when war is what they see and hear about on the television every day?

The rich offerings of English: nevertheless, plenty of fun was had by all today, I think; they certainly seemed enthusiastic - some not even wanting to stop writing at the end of the activity! It was partly the acting-out - the stamping of feet, tooting of traffic, growling of dogs, and so forth, that made the 75 minute sessions so enjoyable, and partly the display of toy cars and other street-relevant toys I'd brought along; and no doubt, too, the performance at the end, involving the chance to climb up onto the school stage. But it was also - above all perhaps - the wonders offered up by the English language that made sounds such fun and fascinating to write about.  A language that offers such a plethora of words for the sound of feet walking on a pavement, or of rain falling on an umbrella, for instance, is inevitably going to be fun to play about with. I suppose if Britain had not been invaded from all sides over the centuries, back in the Dark Ages, it would never have been so marvellously enriched: an irony we often forget.

But I must stop clicking and clacking and tapping and pattering and clunking and thumping and clattering on this computer keyboard, and get these ponderings posted!

A multi-arts approach to writing

Classical music on the radio, a panoramic view from the window, ballet steps while the kettle boils, a family saga or two - they're all helping me to write - I'm sure they are! Even acting-out 'red things' with infant school pupils in yesterday's Colour poetry workshop is adding in, pushing words and concepts forward. For me, one art inspires another.

If only I'd had training in more of them at school! I knew then that arts plural were for me: all arts, no sciences. But that selection wasn't on the agenda, of course, at GCSE level, or O' Level as it was then. The choice was art or music. Drama wasn't even on the list, even at my posh, paying school. So when it came to A' Level, I was only qualified to take one art in addition to English - oh, and the English was literature, not language, so even that wasn't, strictly speaking, an art: it was the study of other people's creativity. Nor have options broadened all that much since, it seems, depending on school and type, at least. The curriculum equips us slightly for everything, but may leave us floundering in our chosen fields if we're not very careful or lucky, especially, perhaps, those of us on the arts side.

I include as many arts as possible in my poetry workshops, even if just in passing: I do so because it pays off. Singing or rhythm-clapping will spark ideas in one child, acting in another, while others gaze at the pictures or glaze over on hearing the sample poem. When possible, I supply theme-relevant toys and artefacts too, and while some children may pretty much ignore them, others will transform the items into characters and invent a whole scene or story with them. Some youngsters, I find, come into their own on the rare occasions that time allows for craftwork, music-setting, or a multi-faceted performance. And if such prompts and triggers work for children, why not for adults? Perhaps artists (using the word in the broad sense) should invest in the participation of other arts as a matter of course - as part and parcel of their work, especially those who, like me, were arts-starved at school. No wonder so many writers suffer from writer's block! 

Well, that's my excuse, anyway, for all my 'time-wasting' and mess-making around the house. I go over the top with those picture displays for my workshops, you see: I go to town, quite unnecessarily for the most part, with coloured paper, crayons, felt pens, glitter and glue, leaves, petals, you name it, all strewn over the living-room carpet while, with any luck, the morning sun streams in. I'll have the energising pulse and heart-lifting chords of Bach's piano concertos, too, ringing in the air to spur me on. Then it's a few clashing, crashing chords of my own on the piano, and perhaps a clumsy dance round the kitchen while the coffee's brewing, and suddenly a long-abandoned poem idea is coming together before my eyes, from where, I'm not sure. From under those keys? From between the coloured papers? From under my dancing feet?

I never got my maths O' Level, but have never missed it. It's those other subjects I need. Do all artists need other arts in their lives, I wonder?

Recipe for Autumn Potion

Kids, parents and teachers - fancy making a Hallowe'en Potion? Not a real one - a poetic one! See previous post for exciting, weird, beautiful, strange and shivery ideas and tips for your poetic recipe! More coming soon. Please note though: you don't need anything unkind, hurtful, cruel or rude to make it fabulous!

Teachers: Autumn recipe ideas!

Are you a teacher? Is poetry-writing, or creative writing generally, on your 'to-do' list? Or do you have a bunch of hesitant or reluctant writers who need an extra spark of fun to fire them up? Here are some ideas and tips for an exciting autumn poem that children of all writing abilities will love, especially with a bit of prompting. The ideas below are all tried and tested, and I'll be following them up with more soon. As for Bonfire Night - I have plenty up my sleeve for firework poetry too, so keep checking back here.

With Hallowe'en looming, and Bonfire Night flashing and sparking up ahead, I've been working with children to create autumn recipe poems. It's great fun for teachers as well as pupils, and can take off in any direction!

While awaiting more detailed ideas and tips (coming later in the week), you could get started with some quantities: a teaspoonful or a treeful? - and some ingredients - flour? What, for autumn? Leaves, more like, or one of their colours, or how about the shadows produced by their wind-swept branches or, for a bit of alliteration, a teaspoon of tricks, toadstools, toad-brown or twinkling twilight? Encourage your class to be bold, to venture out, to stretch their minds up to the amethyst sky above the brassy, coppery treetops, and down to the pungent mud oozing into their sodden shoes.

But you'll need more than a teaspoon of something for a bubbling autumn potion! How about some handfuls and packetfuls now, and some pinches and sprinkles and ladles and dishes and the odd toasting forkful too, of...? Well, that's for your class to decide. Again, you might go for crazy, outlandish measurements rather than familiar, kitchen-focused ones that fit the alliteration game: a whirling mist of purple would be more intriguing than a packet of the stuff. Then there's the cooking of it all, and the question of where to leave your concoction to set. Half-term homework?

More on the topic soon. Meanwhile, check out the autumn poems on my Nature and For kids pages here, and the ones on my other website: poemsforfun.wordpress.com (October Poems and More October Poems).

Happy potion-mixing!

Poems for all!

Teachers, pupils, adults, children, readers, writers, artists, dreamers, and anyone wanting ideas to mull over, or humour to chuckle at - this blog may well be for you. As a published poet, working in schools, performing funny poems to adults, and reading to literary appreciation groups, I offer a range of carefully crafted verses for all, and a colourful mix of accompanying blog posts. Have fun, and let me know your thoughts and views.

October imaginings...

October has caught my imagination this year - and yours? In good and bad ways, wonderful and weird, fun and... not so fun, in my case.

A mix of funny, atmospheric, philosophical, cheery and down-to-earth rhymes and ruminations can be found here, on various pages and posts. New ones added yesterday to Nature and Humorous. See For kids too, for more recent additions. All easy and quick to skim, each with a little something to mull over, or even smile at!

More coming soon.

October's less romantic side...

Well, following last night's romantic view of motorway driving in the October gloaming (see post), it's now morning here - stark, grey, moist, murky, utterly dreary morning, and the rain is dripping through our roof.

Yes, the living room is taking on features of that outside squelch: the damp, the smell, the grey - in stains on the upholstery, ceiling, walls. Builder on his way... bank balance about to suffer a blow. Day's work plans up spout. House up spout even, possibly... who knows! Dark day.

No signs or hints through that lovely, long-gone summer. October's doing, this. So much for lights like chandelier shards in the gloaming!

Spooky winter tree poem

You don't have to believe in witches to feel a certain - or uncertain - creepy frisson on saunters through October woods, or even just the local park. 'Why is that tree leaning over like that... leering at me?' you can find yourself asking the listening, lengthening shadows, as the mist descends, in patches. Despite the comfortable crisp-crunch under foot, you're glad to get home before those clawing twigs overhead reach down any further.

How about a spooky tree poem for Hallowe'en? Wicked Winter Tree (published in Oxford University Press's anthology, Moondust & Mystery, 2002) is now available to read here.

Autumnal poems

Autumnal poems now available to browse here. Easy, quick reads with ideas and atmospheres that linger. 

Meanwhile, the wind is blowing down my chimney as I type, and the rain - or is it a wind-swung twig? - is beating on the dark window, stirring murky October ruminations. An early firework flare through the half-drawn curtains, over the black rooftops - party-pink blending into peach, lemon, silver, golden tears - sparks tingling anticipation of November: the shivery, silvery door to winter.  Door to a new poem?

Latest rhyme

Just to say my latest rhyme is now up here if you feel like a little frivolity and absurdity this evening (if it is evening where you are).

More poems on all pages coming soon. Any topic preferences for any of them?

Hi-tech car catastrophe rhyme time...

Anti-Hijack Mode Rhyme

That frivolous rhyme I mentioned a few posts ago is coming up in a minute - the one I wrote to get car hassles off my chest, in particular those resulting from pressing a wrong button and slotting my car into Anti-Hijack Mode. It'll be on Humorous, though it didn't seem too amusing at the time. It's an embellished version of a real life event, by the way, involving an attempt at a picnic, the main embellishments being the number of passengers involved. The rest is basically as it was. Perhaps you've experienced similar. If not, well done you!

As for Birthday & Anniversary Mode - I'm avoiding that one like the plague. I shudder to think what chaos that could spring on me half way down the M6 at the sharpest corner of some car-width, tree-shrouded lane in the depths of Sussex! Would that, too, bring the car to a halt, flash the lights, jam the doors and hoot the horn? I couldn't face all that again! Or would it simply drive me to distraction with a piped version of Happy Birthday on that already stressful date as I tried to get my head round my even older age while negotiating roadworks and oncoming lorries on one of Wiltshire's sudden Blind summits? I'm risking nothing. I scarcely even dare turn on the wipers after that Anti-Hijack mayhem.

Bring back those good old cars that just moved and stopped!

Artistic traffic!

Driving down the M4 in the gloaming just now was exciting, not just because of the close shaves of swerving, jostling traffic, but because of the jewellery-bright patterns it made up and down the darkening curves of the landscape. Crimson necklaces before me, white diamond ones behind: a gem-studded shawl, shimming and twinkling on a rolling conveyor belt over and round the looming hills and dips. Even the spitting rain worked to effect, refracting the beams and flashes and sending them dancing like shards of shattered chandeliers.
Driving home from work on a dreary night can be inspiring!

Keep kids reading over half term!

Hello, teachers and parents!

If you're keen to keep your youngsters reading over half term, how about showing them the easy-read rhymes and poems on my For kids page? You could then have some family or classroom fun trying some of your own, following similar structures.

For more of my poems, please see my other site: poemsforfun.wordpress.com .

Half term is a wonderful thing, in theory, but not always in practice, when everything needs doing in house and garden, the relatives are expecting visits, the accounts need sorting, and clothes for the coming season need buying... and the kids are bored. Dead bored, from the afternoon of Day One.

"Go and read a book!" you could try, but will they?

"Go and write one, then!" you could nag, but ditto.

Oh, the lure of rhymes!

This is where the magic of a poem comes in. Poems can be short - tiny even - and fun and exciting and mind-opening, and the words can seem like bright little counters on a board, moving in their clever little patterns and shapes, while the rhythms give fidgety limbs something to fidget to!

Get your kids rhyming!

Start them on a rhyme sequence of their own, and you won't be able to shut them up.

Try: "What rhymes with Go?" as your fed up nine-year-old follows you round kitchen, garage or garden path, tugging on your arm and whining in your ear.

Or try: "How many words rhyme with Tree?"

Put them in poetic charge!
Prompt and hint, nudge and spur, as you work away at those chores, or put your feet up and close your eyes, but don't do the work for them: let them do it, and let them amaze and astonish you too, every time!

Time for pen and paper!

Now send them off to write it all down, ready to read out to the proud, enchanted grandparents, the teacher, head teacher, whole school, or to your friends when they land on you at the weekend. And the dog and cat? Well, worth a try.

And don't forget to call after your child as he or her rushes off, fired-up to sizzling point: "You're a real poet, you are!"  After all, it's true: kids are natural poets. Well, that's my opinion anyway.

Happy half term, this week or next or whenever!

Australian wildfires

While here in Wales a kind sun keeps us cheerful in the face of creeping winter, and a gentle breeze soothes, in New South Wales a merciless sun and heartless wind seem to have charged forth together, with what spur I don't know - a match? - savaging all in their path: a bizarre and dreadful contrast to contemplate.

Sympathy to all those affected, and hope that the fires will soon be under control! At such times, nature, wildlife, gardens and beauty are, of necessity, low on the list for rescue, people coming first, of course. But when all is over and the damage inspected, those victims will be mourned too. I don't know the region's romantically named Blue Mountains, never having visited the country, nor how blue their peaks may are - or were, but I guess their shades and hues and shimmering blends are, as I type, being swallowed up with everything else.

Meanwhile, here in Wales, it's time to put the heating on.

Good luck, New South Wales!

Hi-tech, low speed...

The title here refers to my car, the speed being that of the kind neighbour who pushed it down the hill for me earlier this evening. It's had this non-starting problem for a while, intermittently - apparently all resolved one day, disastrous the next. So why don't I get the garage to look at it?  My local, helpful, and highly experienced garageman, 100 metres from my front door? Because he'll draw blank. "Some hi-tech thing," he's bound to shrug, as he did last time and the other half dozen times I've dragged him over  to inspect the beast since snapping it up in a hurried purchase last winter (after driving the last one through a flood).

Even the vehicle recovery teams get stumped and stand scratching their heads while traffic streams past on either side and my work-arrival deadline slides past. In the end, it usually turns out to be a case of trying every possible mix and match of buttons and thumps until you hit lucky - like when the chocolate bar gets stuck in the vending machine. Or it'll be a matter of spotting a dud bulb at the opposite end of the car from the problem.

Or it'll simply be a matter of clicking out of - wait for it - Anti-Hijack Mode. Heard of it? On a car? Well, I hadn't. I live in a quiet country village where hijacks aren't too much of a problem, so I have to confess that it wasn't the number one item on my check list. There's no knowing how I clicked into it, but I expect I was trying to get the wipers to work, as usual. They're hi-tech too, of course, and prefer to work at their own discretion, saving my hand from the tiring action of turning the knob, I suppose - very nice, if one's stationary and resting.

Anyway, I won't bore you with the symptoms of Anti-Hijack Mode, if you haven't experienced it, but, in a nutshell, if you want to open one door you have to shut all the rest first, or lights will flash and the horn will beep and the steering wheel will lock, and that'll be that.  As for opening the boot... simplest just to forget it. You can probably fish out the tea flask with a long arm over the back seat, and the picnic was probably full of calories anyway.

If the manual had been available, I could have checked out the symptoms and pressed the appropriate buttons for the appropriate number of seconds, of course (or just possibly), but it was in the glove compartment, wasn't it. Locked in. Great. So, as per usual, I vented my frustration in a rhyme, which I'll be putting up on the poetry pages soon. It's the sort that calls for a tune actually, so if you're musical...

Meanwhile, bring back the dear old Morris Minor, I say!

Sun after rain

October sunshine after October rain is like a cup of tea after tears - so reviving!

Weak as it is now, the sun seems more wonderful than in the July heat-wave - more golden and precious.

As for the extra bonus of sunlit golden leaves, water-glazed - that's like holiday-treat sugar in my tea! I'm taking my cuppa outside! 

'City centre Saturday' now up

City centre Saturday rhyme

Well, I still haven't got myself out to the shops, but here's a rhyme about that dreaded Saturday city centre mayhem I'm psyching myself up for (on for Kids page).

I should mention that it's also published in Australia's state publication, The School Magazine (besides the Macmillan anthology stated), but I can't find the mag. issue date - sorry.

If you're a teacher, and your current focus is sounds, transport, community, movement, or other related subject, might this poem add an extra splash of fun to the topic?

Meanwhile, good shopping - if you're facing it too!

Supermarket or surplusmarket?

Supermarket decisions amongst all those aisles and aisles of choice, with all those gimmicks and gadgets and cons and tricks to try and make you buy the whole lot, can be a headache, can't it! Whenever I push through the swing doors into that vast, stark, soulless space, under the glare of those eye-stinging strip lights, I feel like curling up in a ball. Perhaps you do too. But curling up in a ball's not really on in a supermarket, of course, so I've put my panic into this poem instead.

City Centre Saturday poem coming soon (on kids' page).

Happy shopping!

Saturday shopping?

The nightmare of Saturday shopping has come round again.

Two poems are coming up later to take the weight off your feet - and your children's.

Decisions in the food hall will be on "Humorous" later; City Centre Saturday on "For kids". That's when I've got my own shopping list sorted and braced myself up to the ordeal with the ever-essential extra-strong coffee and delaying dithering session.

Spider in the bedroom

Here's a Spidery haiku for Hallowe'en (or Halloween), inspired from personal experience - last night. I'm posting this early, so as not to give anyone bad dreams tonight - depending where in the world you are, of course. Or perhaps you like spiders! Wish I could: it would make my life vastly easier at this time of year. I've had to change bedrooms, though who knows how many of the cunning creatures may lurk in the new one?

You can see another spider rhyme further down that page, if you have the stomach for it.

Joining world from room...

Have just joined Twitter. Better late than never, I suppose, although am I really any more linked to the rest of the world than I was five minutes ago, before I joined up? Here I am, still sitting in the same corner of my silent sitting-room, still trying to tear myself away from the screen and get tootling off to kitchen to stick the kettle on, as I was before I pressed those buttons.
There must be many poems written on this common, yet extraordinary new phenomenon of ours, yet I don't hear it spoken of. Occasionally I hear the opposite: that the internet saves solitary people from feeling too unbearably lonely; but I don't hear talk of how mind-blowingly amazing it is that, sitting alone and touching a few light, flimsy buttons on a little plastic bar, we can instantly link up with minds and souls in opposite hemispheres, seasons, climates and time-zones, of different cultures and languages - total strangers we'll never actually meet, see or hear! I suppose it's time I got past that, like everyone else, but I'm not sure I ever will, or want to. I wonder who may glance at this, for instance. Strange thought.

Toad survival poem

Isn't it daft that we humans find it such a struggle to stay dry and warm in winter weather, yet a little toad can huddle up perfectly comfortably under a couple of leaves and sit it out! As for those primroses in my garden I was talking about just now, I've no idea how their silky, tissue-thin petals survived the snow and ice, gales and floods. Not only did they stay alive and upright through those long, merciless batterings of our 2012 winter, but their immaculate, pristine freshness survived too, totally intact: mystery! We'd need a hot soak in the bath and goodness knows what all to get anything like back to normal after an ordeal like that, we, Earth's rulers.

There's a poem about a toad coping with winter on my Nature page, if interested.

Half-term fun with leaves

Seven autumn leaf activities for you and the children over half term:
Whatever the weather, once you're out there, it'll freshen you all up - or the kids anyway! But seriously, you'll be glad to be out of the house and breathing that fresh air, even if you are swallowing the odd rain drop too. So, here we go:

1) Go leaf-hunting. Set challenges to find a certain colour or shape, or one with a caterpillar hole in, or two joined together. Send spare ones whirling in the wind. Try throwing them to each other - impossible?

2) Play Pooh Sticks, or rather Pooh Leaves, on a river bridge, each dropping a leaf down, or preferably a twig of leaves - easier to follow - and see whose is first to come out the other side. (In my past experience, the children's usually seemed to emerge last, regrettably, so I would pretend mine was one of theirs: saved tears!)

Collect more leaves to take home with you. Back indoors, cover the kitchen table with newspaper and set up paints, wax crayons, scrap paper and card, glue and scissors.

3) Put leaves under paper and rub with wax crayons for 'brass rubbing' effect patterns.

4)  Fine art: help children to draw and paint a leaf of their own.

5) Picture poetry: draw a huge, page-sized leaf, or help them to, and write a poem together inside it. This could be a simple simile, starting: "My leaf is as red/orange/fragile/floaty/other... as a ________ .

This could then be extended underneath into a vivid, vibrant vision of that image, as here:

My leaf is as orange as a tiger's eyes -
as orange as a tiptoeing tiger's dazzling, golden-orange eyes, shining out in the midnight jungle.

Keeping the writing clear, the leaf can now be coloured in, cut out and backed onto cardboard.

All artwork can be displayed on the wall, or made into greetings cards or presents for family members.

6) Leaf people: help children to draw and cut out leaf shapes from coloured card (or paper backed with card), and draw funny faces on them. Each could have a name written on the back. Can they talk, and do they have funny voices? Will they be joining you for tea?

7)  Adventure of a fly-away leaf...: settle your children to bed with a story about an autumn leaf and its journey through the sky, letting them contribute ideas as you go along. Does it sail over the ocean? A calm, blue one or a dark, stormy one? What then? Does it skip and dance over a deep, dangerous forest, or glide over the rolling, golden sands of a desert? Or does it hit the nearest washing-line and end up in somebody's trouser pocket?

Perhaps your children would like to write out the story next day, with embellishments and illustrations. Would the family like a mimed and narrated performance of it, with gentle background percussion or music, perhaps?

Still raining outside? Get fire-work-painting, -writing and -enacting on the go!

Funny travel rhymes

Are we at top speed yet, here in super-sophisticated, 21st century Britain?

After all, High Speed 2 is fast approaching... isn't it? And meanwhile, there's always another train... isn't there? Well, a schedule one anyway. Cancelled? Well, how about the bus then? No sign? Oh. Well, it'll have to be the car then, if it's working. Mine's never really recovered since ploughing through a flood, and then a snow drift, followed by a skid over a sheet of ice into a hedge, last winter. (Another symptom of global warming: premature car ageing.) So, what's left? The push bike? Sure! Why not? Because the new bike lane fizzles out at the corner, that's why. And even that little stretch is blocked with parked cars. Walk? Like in the old days? No, not like that - slower, of course. We're not as fit as we were these days, remember. High speed travel have slowed us down.

See Humorous for travel rhymes.

Gardens and global warming

Gardeners - are your gardens changing?

Are last decade's plants falling back behind others that never did so well before? Are your lawns and borders, plots and shrubberies taking on a new look? Or is all that still to come? Is global warming still to kick its way in through the garden gate?

Holidaying in an old haunt in the south west of England this last summer, I noticed a dearth of the usual gorse and heather on the moors, but an abundance of foxgloves where I didn't recall seeing any before. It might just have been that our holiday was a few weeks earlier than usual, or that the customary wild fires had burnt off the usual great mops of yellow and purple. It's hard to judge, as a sight-seer.

In my own garden, weeds predominated this year, despite several plantings of the usual shop seedlings: lobelia, pansies, violas and stocks. As for our hydrangea, its buds never came to anything: I've given up checking now: first ever failure in the six years we've had it. Yet our frail-looking primroses bloomed and blossomed year-round through 2012, through flood, snow, frost, hail and all. Come to think of it, where are they now? This time last year, bizarrely, they were in full radiance, flowering in thick bunches. Was it the July heatwave that put paid to them at last? After all, primroses aren't meant to be around in July, surely? Spring is their time - or was.

Is global warming at work in my garden, or is it just that I'm not at work in it? It's true, the weeds have been a put-off this year - not to mention the weather. But which came first, the weeds or my laziness? I'm not entirely sure.
Climate change, or just a slight drainage problem round the flowerbeds after a patch of good old British weather? It's a conundrum: that's all I know, so far.

Schools! Hallowe'en spell rhymes for pupils!

Get kids writing, and loving it!

Teachers often tell me they get a bit stuck when it comes to poetry 'lessons'. How to get kids writing? They yearn for some magic spell to zap every pen into action. Perhaps, if you're a teacher, you may know the feeling.

So how about some Hallowe'en spells? (There are various ways of spelling Hallowe'en, so if you're wondering, this is definitely one of them - I checked!) I mean, of course, spells to write - nice, friendly, positive ones, preferably. (Spells can, of course, be funny while also being kind and well-intentioned. There is never an excuse to resort to cruelty or any other socially unacceptable implication for the sake of that funny effect.) Your class spells could be composed in rhyming couplet form.

Imaginations can run riot now, stretching active language and developing writing skills without students even noticing!  You'll find a few start-off ideas on one of yesterday's posts, and a couple of examples on my poetry page For kids.

The starter line can run on any theme you like, perhaps in line with a school project. For example, if you're studying light, the starter line could be:

Dazzle, glow, gleam and shine.

The second line could start with 'Let' and end in any word that rhymes with 'shine', for example:

Let my spelling test go fine! or, if you don't mind a greedy note:

Let those chocolates all be mine!
I usually elicit a list of words that rhyme, first, and write them down the far right-hand-side of the whiteboard, in my poetry sessions, and start off the whole-line rhyme process by asking the class to focus on one chosen word. Once they've got the hang of this, with the rhythm, which can be clapped out for testing, they can go ahead and try rhymes with the other listed words; then invent their own start line too.

Having enjoyed writing and reading out these spells, your charges will be itching to write more! So how about some Hallowe'en riddles next? Subjects to be identified could include spiders, beetles, frogs, toads, bats, moonlight, pumpkins, wizards, fairies, wands, fog, mist, candles, a magic tree...

Poems could start with:

What am I?

And follow with:

a line of adjectives (or describing words),
a line of verbs (or doing words),
a simile,
and a metaphor, i.e. another simile, with 'like' or 'as... as' removed.

This is, loosely speaking, a cinquain. I say loosely because cinquains tend to involve a second metaphor and start with a description of the subject, but let's not be ruled by rules!

The answer can be provided upside down, back to front, in tiny writing, in another language, or through mimed, voiced or acted-out demonstration.

Now your youngsters will be ready to extend one or two of their ideas into longer, richer, more fully thought- out poems, shooting off where and how they wish. The trouble now will be to stop them when the bell rings for home-time.

As for spelling, punctuation and handwriting - they can wait!

Funny side of life

Well, I've been waxing rather serious of late - late morning, that is. It's really high time I got on with something useful. I'm all too aware of the traffic rushing about outside and builders busily drilling and hammering just down the road, and various members of my family striving away at mind-bogglingly demanding jobs, while I have a day off today. Shameful! Still, we need to allow ourselves the odd corner of time for pondering, don't we? In fact, we don't allow enough time for it, surely, these days at least; perhaps we never did. And how often do we stop and take stock of the ridiculous? The lip-curling, daft, silly, down-right absurd? Not nearly often enough! There's always something pressing us to get on - something telling us to wipe that smile off our faces, push that frivolous thought to the back of the mind and face up to cold, stark reality: always that call for solid, on-the-ball common sense. No, there's precious little time in a day to consider the idiocy of this modern hassle or that new hurdle, even though we find ourselves tripping over them day-in-day out.

I have an unpublished, but often performed, collection called The Mad Side of Modern, of which I've put a few offerings on my Humorous page here, with more to follow shortly. Next rhyme in line: 'Decisions in the foodhall'. More about that later.

Right! Breakfast time now, an hour or so before lunchtime... or is the cereal on the shopping list? Bother!

Nature takes over now...

Nature takes over in autumn.

Creepy-crawlies come in through cracks, hide in our corners, scuttle and scurry as we sleep. Chill sweeps through our homes, cars, clothes, dictates our wardrobe, heating bills, hobbies and diets. Birds swoop low over our busy lives, catching our eyes, sparking dreams; the sinking sun slides across our windows, blinding us as we try to peer out, dazzling us through our windscreens as we try to steer. The early evenings draw us in; cause us to close our doors - and lock them. Owls hoot persistently into the dark nights, and foxes cut the brittle air with their sharp yaps, breaking into our spidery nightmares like alarm bells. 

Yes, nature is dominant in the autumn. It's turning us round with our world, of course, and, clever as we may be, super-sophisticated, nature-free as we imagine ourselves to be, we follow and obey; as ever, nature leads the way, but somehow we notice it more on a dark day.

I've put a few more autumnal poems and rhymes on my pages here - fresh from the paper page - if anyone wants a glance. And then, why not write your own? Then sing or draw it, or sew or build or sculpt or carve it, depending which art form you're happiest with? Then carry it around - in your pocket if it'll fit - for sharing. It'll probably be as good a pick-me-up - for you and others - as a cup of coffee (and much healthier!).

Autumn's emotions...

Yes, autumn is definitely a poetry-trigger - a mood-swinger.

Is it the colouring of the trees into their treasury glory, and the graceful gliding of the leaves through darkening skies? Is it the yearning to be free like those leaves - and like the dashing, darting swallows, diving through the sunset towards the invisible, unimaginable elsewhere? Is it the beauty and grace or autumn, or its frail, ephemeral nature, that sets us ruminating, rummaging for pens and paper? Or is it the whole caboodle, trembling in suspense together like a bubble, that thrills us - makes us hold our breath, holding hard onto haunts of summer while bracing ourselves for the snap - winter's snap?

It's a time for art and music too, for gazing up at the turbulent sky and hearing the howls of how? and why?... but I'm falling into rhyme again... time to stop!

More autumn poems on their way to various pages here. 

Teachers! Autumn leaf poetry ideas...

Ideas for autumn leaf poetry in school:

I'm doing lots of autumn leaf poetry in primary schools at the moment, and the children love the topic! I scoop up a bagful of wet, freshly fallen leaves from my garden before setting out in the morning, and replenish them from the school grounds in the lunch break - with enthusiastic help from children.

We act out trees in the wind, and leaves falling off them, discuss autumn leaves we've seen, felt, caught, stepped on, compare their colours with those of other things. Next I hand out a leaf for each child, for feeling, sniffing, blowing on, holding up to the light, spinning and dropping. With plenty of prodding, prompting and sharing, they're soon ready for a word-building challenge, in song-form with guitar or tambourine for younger children.

I hand out sheets with giant leaf illustrations, with a lead-in line: "Leaves can be - " and children rush to jot down their ideas all over it, on the veins, in between, inside and outside the outline, at all angles. The sheet also offers curvy lines outside the leaf, with phrase-starters, such as "They are as colourful as" and "They go ______________ing through the _________________ ."

Of course, the children are encouraged to take off - like leaves - and extend or adapt their poems as they wish.

Colouring-in has to wait, and then must be done round the precious words, not over, when everyone has read out a word or five from their sheet!

These ideas can be developed in a myriad ways, on cut-out leaf shapes perhaps, to be displayed round the classroom! They could lead on to collages, tapestries, songs, performances, you name it...!

Gardeners! Humorous poems to browse...

Hello, are you a keen gardener? You are? Really? But how can you be, when everything in nature seems to go against one's efforts? Don't worry - only joking... mostly.

But seriously, why is it that whatever I plant, weeds come up instead? Or if the actual planned plants do come up, they do it in a totally different part of the garden from the one I planted them in?

It was a joy to see forget-me-nots flowering last summer, for instance, with their twilight-defying baby-blue petals and star-bright centres, shining out to greet me whenever I nipped out to collect forgotten cardigans from the lawn, or search for my specs - lovely! But why grow out of a drain? I mean, there was a perfectly good flower bed for them just across the path.

Or if my plants do come up, and in the right place too, they do it three years hence, by which time I've got other plans for that corner of the garden, and don't particularly want an army of lupins marching through my new summerhouse!

Anyway, to get all these sorts of things off my chest, and to appease my constant zest to be writing poems (so much easier and totally mud-free), I've built up quite a collection of gardening (or non-gardening) poems now, and rather than have them lie idle in my drawer, I've put some of them up here on this site, as you'll see. Others will be swapped in and out now and again. If you're the other side or end of the world, remember I'm in damp, soggy Britain.

Enjoy, and/or, let me have your comments.

Good gardening!

Autumn or spring?
Here in the UK autumn has kicked in, from crunchy, already-decaying leaves underfoot and chill in the air to that sad, nostalgic feel everywhere. Summer lurks in background memories like a slow-fading echo, summer deckchairs still now cleaned up and stored away for the year, garden gatherings gone for goodness knows how long, last lingering laughter over the last outdoor tea-time sunk without trace in the October downpours. When we get sunshine, the shadows on the lawn are long now, like sighs... soon the sun will be too weak for shadows at all. Yet a parcel in today's post reminded me that the sun is still shining elsewhere.

A package fell through the letterbox which turned out to be a copy of Australia's state publication, The School Magazine, sent because in which I have a poem in it this month, along with some other poets.  But it was the picture accompanying the poems that caught my eye. I was gazing at a double page of summer-blue ocean! Sea was the theme of the several poems presented there, so no surprise - but the picture, by Matt Ottley, is just so alluring it made me yearn to be right there, in it, lolling idly about in its light, lapping water!

Still, autumn crispness can be pretty good too - when we get it. As for autumn gloom - well, there's always music and lights and dancing and dreaming and brisk walks through the gloaming - never so bad when you're in it!

Parents - Hallowe'en rhyme-fun for the kids!

Parents - fun idea for Hallowe'en! 
Keep the kids happy and occupied in an enjoyable - yet educational - way, writing funny, friendly Hallowe'en spells. They'll develop their writing, reading and poetic skills before they know it! But don't stand for being turned into that frog!

See previous posts and 'For kids' page for tips and ideas.

Attention teachers!

Hallowe'en rhyme ideas!
Great for rhyme practice, imagination-triggers, language-stretching, and lesson fillers! Children love them, and get writing without even noticing!

Tried and tested in my poetry workshops.

See previous post + 'For kids' page for format and starter line ideas.

Kids: Hallowe'en rhyme-time!

For youngsters at home or at school -

How about writing some Hallowe'en spells - nice ones please!
See examples on For kids page.

Here are some starter lines to get you going:

Up, down, left and right,
Let ___________________ bright/night/fight/fright/flight/kite/anything else.

Example: 
Let the stars shine out tonight!

Beach, ocean, tide and shore,
_________________________  floor/door/bore/more/anything else.

Example:

Let me not fall on the floor!

Earth, water, fire and air,
Let __________________ 
I'll leave you to think up the rest.

Fruit, cream, sugar, honey,
__________________________
Have fun!



             

Nature poems to browse!

Still building my new site... first nature poems now up: rhythmic, rhyming, atmospheric and fun.

Any nature topic requests? I have poems on nature of all sorts - well, almost.

Hallowe'en rhymes for kids

Hi,

Some of my rhymes and poems for youngsters are now up on display here,
including a Hallowe'en spell or two!  Click For kids page.

Your turn?  

If you're a child, or have one or some, or teach a bunch of them, how about a fun writing activity, creating some crazy home-spun spells - or school-spun? Lovely, friendly ones, I mean! No nasty ones, please! The only spells worth having are happy, helpful or kind ones. I suppose if you want to turn yourself into a frog, well, that's up to you!

Starter line ideas coming soon: watch this space!

Autumnal inspiration...

Autumn may have its sad side, but it's a door-opener for poetry inspiration - as proved by children at the schools I visit.

What can you write about a handful of crumpled, brown leaves on a dull, colourless day, in a cramped, stuffy classroom? You'd be amazed what enthralling poetry young children can come up with! 

More poems

I'm slowly building my website - filling it with poems, old and new, published and unpublished, funny, atmospheric and - well, you'll see.

Comments welcome - good, bad or indifferent!

First few

Just for the record - I now have a few poems up on various pages. More to come. Any comments, preferences, requests or advice welcome. K.

Poetry possible

Hello. A poetry panorama is planned for this blog, if I can get the technical side sorted.

Back soon - hopefully!

Kate