Fruits of Children's Poetry Workshops

Well - poetry inspiration and poems written are the true outcomes
of poetry workshops.

In May I had a week visiting Ipswich and outlying schools with poetry workshops to create and inspire entries for the Ipswich Poetry festival.

Wow!  It was amazing to reach so many children- in different age groups to show them how easy and how satisfying it is to write a poem.


Thanks to Carol Moore at the Ipswich library and her dedicated committee for sending me this article.

Local newspaper report of photos of one of the sessions.



I love encouraging children and adults to write and in doing so to discover a bit more about themselves and the world around them.

Workshops and creative work

Picture book idea month is a great way to commit more thinking space to writing.

I am on track and not the most brilliant ideas are coming out but I am jotting them down and looking again at picture books written by other authors.

Even something like this- those unexpected unexplained moments get the creative juices going.

A native crimson Rosella in the lounge room.  Funny that the towel we used to gently catch it matches the overall colour scheme.

Just when you thought there was nothing fresh to write about a Rosella appears!!

And Friday I took part in a Ford street workshop day with local schools participating in three workshops listening to a variety of authors.

The best question asked for the day- describe what you want to achieve in your writing in one word...

Mine was 'hope'.  What would yours be?

Spring

October and I'm working on a new book.  I love getting into the rhythm of regular everyday writing and when I do I wonder why I haven't disciplined myself enough before now to make it an unyielding habit.

This week I am workshopping into Melbourne schools, both primary and secondary, so no writing then, but showing the love of writing poetry.

Two of my techniques that I've pioneered- incident writing and images will be demonstrated again.  Such satisfying and fully attainable poetry techniques, always bringing new poems into existence.

I am continuing my blogging over at Christchurch kids blog.

We also will welcome a new puppy into the family.  I haven't looked after a pet for years, so this is both exciting and challenging.

Here is his welcome pack so far.

My writing friend Janeen Brian and her husband Jon visited so of course we talked and talked and talked.

Hello Janeen!!!

Poetry workshops

Last week I took poetry workshops; performed a couple of poems first then moved into strategies like Images for the older classes, conversation poetry, funny poems, falling down poems.  All techniques I've developed over a number of years and fine tuned as I teach them a number of times- the results are amazing, great fun and the children achieve a written poem- often two in the 55 minutes session.   I love encouraging children to write- and they can write!