This has been quite a week and I thought I would share some of the adventures and highlights with you…
Last weekend, I attended a London Lapidus meeting http://www.lapidus.org.uk/ The Writing for Wellbeing Organisation. The guest speaker and facilitator was Margot Van Sluytman, who shared some of her story about how she came to meet the man who murdered her father and what has happened since then. She also read a selection of her poetry and lead us through writing exercises. It was an insightful and powerful meeting.
At the beginning of the week, I travelled across town to Brunel University for a ‘Writing The 1940’s’ Workshop with Emma Laura Filtness. The workshop was held in the special collections department of the library and it was wonderful to have access to carefully chosen archive materials, which we were given time to absorb and then respond to with our writing. It was exciting to be on the other side again too! I began a poem, based on a few of the pieces:
1940
A letter from Canada.
Tells of an Invasion across Europe
1941
Air Raids
Allotment
Sleep – A blessing
1944
A doctor takes a shower
Gleaming tile; “How well the German’s cared for us.”
A prisoner washes in fear
Their last shower.
I also delivered two more workshops in Teddington for the housing provider C&C http://www.ccht.org.uk/
The C&C Sheltered Housing Scheme workshops are part of a new series of eight and we developed our work on POV, where we looked at the third person in the novel ‘The Electric Michaelangelo’ by Sarah Hall – which also evokes powerful setting.
During the Read Aloud session in the Care Home, I decided that in addition to reading poetry – I would also use portrait postcards to trigger discussion on character. All of the residents at this home have dementia.
This seemed to work well and I jotted down the comments from the residents, to create a short poem. It felt good to try something new with the group. After this, I read them a poem from the collection ‘Poem For The Day’ to mark each of their Birthdays. Here is the group’s poem:
I am
I am a very intelligent woman
I am talking to you
Hello, it’s me
I am a poet
We are very happy
I am determined
Wednesday evening saw the Creative Writes ‘Colour As Writing Inspiration’ Workshop, where we walked around the beautiful gardens at the Muswell Hill venue, looked at a wide range of images and delved into memories. Here are a couple of comments from participants:
The next morning, I was off to North West London Network and Recommendations group to represent Creative Writes – which was really busy and good fun. I spoke to lots of great people – some familiar faces and some new. The group’s facebook page membership has increased rapidly, thanks to the hard working organiser Laurel Alper. Here is the link to their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447039598894916/?fref=ts
The next Creative Writes workshops are as follows: Themed ‘Writing The Senses’ Workshop on Wednesday 24th June, the block of three July workshops from Wednesday 8th July and our ‘Myriad of Objects’ Themed Workshop on Wednesday 29th July.
All Creative Writes workshops are 7.30-9.30pm in Muswell Hill, North London. Please click on the link below for full details of our programme and watch the Creative Writes video to hear how it all works – all you need is an open mind!
Bookings page:
https://www.creativewrites.co.uk/p/bookings-workshop-info-how-to-book.html
Creative Writes video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RsbC4yYLJ4
If you are not on our mailing list and would like to be, please email: info@creativewrites.co.uk
Many thanks for reading, bye for now!
Nichola x