Memories in a Suitcase at Brudenell Primary School

 Richard Wilcocks writes:

At the start of the first of three sessions on identity and memories, poet #MalikaBooker spoke about family memories with an enthusiastic class made up of a mixture of nine, ten and eleven year-olds, with their teacher Tom Nutman. Most of them recognised the situation when she read her poem about shopping in Brixton market with her grandma as a child. She followed with another of her poems – ‘Letting Go’ – about a cat that had to be given away when she was born. So did she always write about her early life?

 

“It’s not all about my life,’ she said. “Sometimes it’s about things which haven’t happened and sometimes it’s about a very short moment. Or another person’s whole life! Whatever you’re writing about you’ll have to think about details and imagery.” 

She asked the children what they could see from a window at home. There was a shower of responses – people walking past, cats and dogs, houses, the mosque. “Now try making it easier for people to imagine what you saw. Give more details. Houses built with red bricks? A large, brown, hairy dog? A mosque with a dome? Try using metaphors? Using your five senses?”

 

The rest of the session was devoted to painting pictures in someone’s mind, using descriptive words and comparisons. A scruffy dog? A green dome? Happy, smiling people? A child thin as a pencil? And what about abstractions? What does jealousy taste like? What does love look like?

 

A few days later, during the second session, Malika asked the class to consider the idea that if you had to leave home and couldn’t go back, which five things would you take in a suitcase? ‘Suitcase’ , the lead poem in a collection with the same name by #RogerRobinson * was distributed and read out. The children made lists. Food and entertainment were important practical considerations at first – sandwiches, chocolate bars, bags of lentils, board games – but after Malika’s prompting, the importance of significant memories began to be appreciated. Books of photos. Special friends. Specific moments of happiness with parents, brothers and sisters which are fixed in the brain. Loving relationships.

 

Tom Nutman stepped in to explain that this was going to have a lot to do with work next term on metaphors and that he would follow up the work started with Malika in the next few days. Malika said she was really looking forward to hearing the class’s ‘list poems’ or 'suitcase poems' when she came in for the third and final session, because she had been delighted with the imaginative efforts made so far. She warned the class they would have to be brave. All four adults present - Malika, Tom, myself and Learning Support Assistant Nasira Mirza echoed the warning, following it with reassurances.

Suitcase (poetry), Flipped Eye Publishing, 2005. ISBN 978-0954224776

The finale came a week later. It took place in the gym. Malika knows a few things about nerves before a performance, so she spent the first fifteen minutes of the rehearsal putting into practice a few of the techniques she has learned over the years. The fledgeling poets had to become spoken word artists. They stood up to plant their feet firmly and take a really deep breath, stepped out front to deliver the first line of their poem in a loud voice to Mr Nutman standing at the far end of the gym and played a hilarious circle game involving throwing an imaginary ball to be caught be a friend.

The show was like a happy dream. Several children who had said that they just could not go through with it the day before were transformed into confident performers. Nasira explained to me that she had been concerned about one boy who had been flushed and trembling twenty-four hours previously but who had read his poem out with no apparent problems. And the smiling faces proved that the whole business was really enjoyable. Camera phones were in evidence too, pointed by mothers at sons and daughters, by children at friends and by Mr Nutman himself, who operated the school's video camera. This was an experience not to be forgotten in a hurry.

Tom Nutman, Jill Harland and Nasira Mirza with Malika

Comments from those present included:

It is vital for us as educators that we create as many opportunities as possible for our young people to be inspired by and to produce poetry. and to express themselves creatively. Thankyou, Malika! (Headteacher Jill Harland)

I am so proud of you. The poetry was great and your confidence in speaking in public has grown. (Tom Nutman)

Young poets' dream! This will be the making of them! (Nasira Mirza)

They need it for high school confidence. It's huge for them, a massive achievement! (Shaza, parent)

Thanks are given to Leeds City Council's Inner North West area management committee for funding this work once again.

A Journey - at Quarry Mount Primary School

 Sarah Andrews writes:

 

#James Nash, the poet commissioned by Headingley LitFest to work with youngsters in local primary schools, has been visiting Quarry Mount primary school for about a decade.  Each time he visits is different:  different year group, teacher, class or topic  This time it was the Second World War and the theme of a journey, leaving family in a targeted city for the safety of a place with no bombs.

 

As headteacher Rebecca Pettman confided, for some of the pupils this was a reality they have already experienced: a number of her pupils come from the middle East.  A sobering thought.

 

Evacuees was a theme that brought out “some brilliant creative writing, a lot of empathy and imagination, as well as some extraordinary lines of prose poetry.”   Class 5 teacher Kirsty Moleele (pictured with James) was just so impressed with the work that James had drawn out of the pupils with his work on setting a scene, getting her class to draft and edit, and sharing with first themselves and then with a whole school assembly which included a dozen or so parents. 

 

Personal journeys in courage for the youngsters too. We were warned that “Some lines are heart-breaking, get the tissues ready.”  The class was complimented on the bravery involved in sharing their work with each other and then the whole school, trying to find their 'playground voices' despite nerves.

 

Hopes, fears, terrors, and longing were evident in every poem. Lines like:

'I want peace to begin and the war to end'

'I miss my old life'

'Why does war even exist?'

'Freedom has gone away'

‘It was time to say goodbye to my life before, My happy memories of the past'

'I'm worried my dad will be hurt or killed'

'I can taste bitter depression in my freezing mouth as the sky is lit by the fires of the German bombs'

'I hug my mum as it may be the last hug I will get from her'

'Pain is all I know, children parted from their family'

 

These children are only nine or ten years old and some of the writing is clearly born out of experience. Writing poetry about difficult experiences in a collaborative 'safe space' like school can be healing.

 

 Every member of the class read out some or all of the lines they had crafted, with various degrees of growing confidence as shyness gave way to pride in achievement.  One boy, who finds reading a challenge, was supported by the trainee teacher and almost burst with pride as he read out his whole poem. While one girl, for whom English is her second language, glowed with pleasure as she contributed along with her classmates. Would the school want to do this again?  Loud sound of cheers and shouts of 'Yes!'

Thanks are given to Leeds City Council's Inner North West area management committee for funding this work once again.

 

 

Rubbish work at Weetwood Primary School

They say to beware the Ides of March but before Shakespeare's doomladen warning to Julius Caesar 15^th March was known for celebrating the first full moon of the year that falls in the middle of the month with drinking, picnics and festivities.

 

We partook of no drink, and the late snowfall outside certainly did not encourage outdoor feasting, but we did celebrate the poetry written by class 5 based on their trip to a rubbish recycling plant.  The class performed their original work in front of many of their parents, shyly at first and then with increasing aplomb. Indeed, there was a clamour to read all their verses after each child had read a selected verse. Joanne Parker, class teacher, was both delighted and stunned by the quality of the writing and the extraordinary self-confidence that some of her class unexpectedly showed. 

 

James Nash and Joanne Parker

“Dad, you've just got to come” was a common theme amongst the many parents waiting to be admitted to a tightly-packed class assembly with standing room only.  They agreed that their children had been excited about the workshops with James Nash, local writer and poet - and proud to show their writing and their performances to their families. One carer said “She struggled with reading before this but has absolutely grown in confidence” since her work on this topic. Another commented on the thought given to the vocabulary and metaphors her child had used, followig the rubbish to its end as ash and energy.

 

The fear of a blank page had been banished by inspiration, drafting, editing and creation of quality pieces of writing they were keen to share. New vocabulary was translated into powerful prose poems as we heard of jostling and ominous journeys by abandoned food and clothing tossed and tumbled into the dark bucket of doom.  Delivered to the jaws of  a menacing dragon and into the licking flames of his empty stomach.  Household goods assassinated by a sea of terror. Menacing and scavenging machines whose claws show no mercy.  Heated like a barbecue. Escape?  Hopeless! 

 

It was clear that not only had the youngsters really taken the concept of recycling to heart but that the message was most powerful through the medium of poetry. Reduce, reuse and recycle was never so eloquently expressed or understood.  “Three weeks ago I was an amazing hat but now ...”

 

Would Mrs Parker, class teacher, like to recycle this idea and do it again?  Absolutely!

 

Thanks are given to Leeds City Council's Inner North West area management committee for funding this work once again.

 

 

Heartline Writers - Phenomenal Woman

Poetry, stories and singing for International Women’s Day 

Richard Wilcocks writes:

In Headingley’s Heart Centre, the Shire Oak Hall was full. A Powerpoint display was beginning on the large screen, ready to inform those present of the names of poets and their poems, and the now-traditional table of home-made cakes was in position at the back of the audience. This event is well-established, an essential part of the local calendar. Liz McPherson introduced the proceedings.

 

                                                                                                                  Photo by Richard Wilcocks

First image on the screen was of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who was shot in the head by the Taliban for publicly advocating education for women and girls, but who fortunately recovered from her wounds to become world famous. Karen Byrne had her in mind when she read her poem Afghan, which is in the style of a letter of protest – ‘I have to hide my face/ I have to forget my dreams’.

 

Eileen Neil read two poems. She acknowledged that she had been influenced by Maya Angelou in writing The Call, which contains a list of legendary women from a range of cultures. It ends with ‘They are coming – the Rainbow Generation’. She was inspired by a violin concerto by Michael Daugherty entitled Blue Elektra to write a poem with the same name. Its subject is Amelia Earhart, mysteriously lost somewhere in the Pacific while trying to circumnavigate the world in 1937.

 

Cate Anderson gave us another true story entitled Refuge, which emerged from her extensive research. This was full of information (and reminders) about what it was like in 1971 in England, when people tended to make statements like ‘Marriage is the high point of a woman’s life’ while not doing much of a practical nature about domestic violence. Activist Erin Pizzey was mentioned as a pioneer, the founder of a domestic violence shelter in a two-bed derelict house in West London, which expanded and led to the establishment of many others.

 

Jackie Parsons’s poem Chocolate Cakes and Atom Bombs provided us with the fascinating image of the nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer sitting in a café in Los Alamos, his mouth full of the cake sold by the owner, Edith Warner. This was followed by Woman, a memoir poem about her beloved nan.

 

Bill Fitzsimons presented us with his poem Greta, about the famous environmental campaigner. Her surname, according to Bill, should be ‘Thunderberg’. His other poem was Universal Mother, about what mothers have to endure: ‘the price is paid by woman’.

 

Marie Paule Sheard took us to India for her fact-packed Story of Mrs Phule and Fatima Sheikh. These were two nineteenth-century campaigners who challenged ancient beliefs and customs connected with Caste and religion, when ‘the only value of women was the dowry and the siring of boys’’.

 

                                                                                             Photo by Richard Wilcocks

Acapella group Harissa (pictured above) then stepped forward, ten well-rehearsed women. In amongst folk songs, they sang a beautiful madrigal composed by John Wilbye in the late sixteenth century. That must have taken some special rehearsing! With an excellent balance of high and low voices, it was fit for a queen, as it had to be four centuries ago.

 

Linda Marshall, well-known to Headingley LitFest and to poetry groups far and wide, appeared on the screen as she was unable to be present. The Coat was about seemingly ordinary women who are really extraordinary, and The New Housekeeper is an amusing account of a rebellious woman who causes havoc, changing the locks and ‘calling up her cavalry of cutlery’.

 

Barbara Lawton presented an account of the life of Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, born in Whitechapel, London in 1836. She was faced with all the usual prejudices when she was wanting to become a doctor, but she eventually made it, founding a hospital for women staffed by women near Euston Station.

 

Myrna Moore’s poem Nanny of the Maroons, about a key rebel woman in Jamaica’s history, begins with the line ‘She grabbed a cudgel’ and ends with ‘She likkle but she Tallawah’, an expression which can be used for the island of Jamaica as well. Tallawah is patois for strong. The second poem was Bertha, the ‘mad woman in the attic’ in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, who was brought to England from the Caribbean. Her actual name, according to Jean Rhys’s 1966 novel The Wide Sargasso Sea is Antoinette, and the poet adopts her voice to describe her life with Rochester ‘guarded like an escaped prisoner’.

 

Dru Long took us to Iran in Woman Life Freedom, mindful of the brave women there who resist their theocratic government’s harsh laws about wearing head coverings. She connected the women who have died at the hands of the ‘morality police’  with famous suffragettes of the early twentieth century who died for the cause, like Emily Davison in 1913.

 

Malcolm Henshall was influenced in writing his poem Mother and Child by his professional life as a Special School teacher before he retired. Many of the parents he encountered were single mothers. He admitted worrying about his ability to write poetry, but he needn’t have, because his play with the words tears, fears and cares was terrific, the rhymes and repetitions working well. His Angels, a short piece about nurses, drew plenty of applause: ‘applause don’t pay the bills’.

 

Liz McPherson returned for the final reading. This is Reconstruction was a moving poem about her grandma, remembered as ‘clicking her teeth like knitting needles’. The second poem Vade Mecum was like a book of memories, rather confessional but ‘not just about me’. She revealed that she has not been to actual confession for fifty years. I can only gasp.

 

Harissa came back to finish off an enjoyably mind-stimulating morning show with Girls just wanna have fun. Surely we don’t have to wait another year for something like this.

 

 

 

'Where I live' at Shire Oak Primary School

The Poet’s Blog

It was World Book Day and I felt seriously underdressed. I  was at Shire Oak Primary School ,  in Year 2’s classroom and I was surrounded by young people dressed as favourite characters from books.   All the children had made such an effort, including Helen Barley the class teacher (pictured) who was in  dragon costume.

 

It was my final visit to the class, and we were about to get ready to share our work.

In previous sessions we had used the theme of ‘Where We Live’ to talk about the houses we lived in,  favourite buildings in Headingley and even favourite trees.  The enthusiasm of the children was boundless.  In no time they had written their first ideas down and many of them had read their writing out to the whole class. 

 

We then talked about how to turn those initial ideas into a first draft of a poem by choosing their best lines and deciding on the best order to put them in. I showed them what I had done to turn my first ideas into a poem, knowing in my heart of hearts that some of the children’s writing, in its freshness and originality, would outstrip my own 

 

We decided together that poems did not have to rhyme but that it was sometimes effective to have a rhythm running through them.

 

‘I would take a picture of everything’ one young poet began their writing,

 and another wrote

 

‘my house has a cat

That is so red that

It warms me up

Every time I see him’.

 

And I have to pinch myself to remember that my young poets are only six or seven years old.

 

On this final session we talk about what we have learned together, before finishing off our poems and getting ready to have them recorded so that parents can see what their children have achieved.  They are very keen to share their work, particularly as they feel so proud of what they have written.

 

One by one read some the whole poem or some  a favourite line from their writing.  They read beautifully, and I’m left with a wonderfully inspired feeling, with the final line of one poem still in my head as I walk home,

 

‘My favorite tree

Is my apple tree in my back garden,

It welcomes me with a smile.’

 

#James Nash 3^rd March 2023