Poet James Nash at Weetwood Primary School

 

Poems about the experience of slavery

James Nash writes:

Year 5 at Weetwood Primary School have been learning about African life and culture, a display of the masks they have made lights up the classroom and they have already written quirky stories inspired by Alexander McCall Smith’s ‘Folktales from Africa: The Baboon Who Went this Way and That’. They have just been introduced by their teacher Joanne Parker to some of the troubling history of African slavery and are more than ready to talk about it to me.

 

After a few introductions, about my work as a writer, I show them a broken clay head of an African child [pictured] and we use it to sketch out some ideas about how it makes us feel in response to some very general questions from me.  I encourage them to write in the first person as if they are they are the child experiencing the kidnapping and violence at the hands of the slavers.  We talk about ‘empathy’ and what it means, and how using their five senses can bring writing to life for a listener or reader.  After every question I invite the young people to share their answers with the rest of the class. It is extraordinary how in a very short time they become absorbed in their task and how imaginative and empathetic the writing they produce is.

The very next day I am in the classroom with them again.  Our task today is to look at our notes and start thinking about how they might be transformed into something that looks and sounds more like a poem.  I have brought in my second draft of a new poem written about the clay head.  I talk about the importance of editing and redrafting, that they are in charge of their words and get them to think which are their favourite phrases and sentences from the previous day, and which order they might use them.  We look at my second draft and talk about what my decisions were in setting my poem out. Then I set them off to writing a second draft themselves, punctuated by me sharing examples of their work.  Concentration and application are very high.  This second session ends with many of the children coming to the front of the class and reading what they have written.

On the third session we are unable to read our work out to a larger audience of parents and fellow pupils, but we are very excited to share both our folktales and the new poems on slavery with each other.  Year 5 have shown incredible maturity in dealing with such an adult topic, and read their stories and poems with great confidence.  Lines which stand out [amongst many] are,

‘The scars on the surface of my face show how broken I am’

AND

‘My dream is to get out of this madness’

AND

‘heavy shackles weigh me down’

AND

‘my friends are fading from me’.

When I take feedback from Year 5, many say that they have learned the importance of drafting and redrafting, [ someone wrote a heartfelt, ’learning to be patient with my writing by doing lots of drafts’], they liked my open questions about what was happening to their character.  They liked the experience of sharing their work with others in the class and many felt they had grown in confidence.  One young person felt that the best thing about the project was ‘my development in the poetry industry’. Me too!

Joanne Parker said that working with me had inspired the children, ‘it upped their game, elevated their ideas and motivated them’.

As a lovely postscript the class presented me with a copy of McCall Smith’s book of African folktales.

 

James Nash with Joanne Parker

15 June 2021

Funded by your councillors of the Inner North West Community Committee: 

Headingley & Hyde Park, Little London & Woodhouse, Weetwood 

Poet Malika Booker at Brudenell School, Leeds

 Richard Wilcocks writes:

Under the banner of Headingley LitFest, I have now been taking Malika Booker to Brudenell Primary School annually since 2016, with 2020 missed out because of a certain pandemic. In previous years, her sessions were spread over three weeks, with a performance to the whole school in the third, but this year there were a few complications, and her three sessions had to be in the same week. In addition, the class teacher who had been such a great help in 2019, Tom Nutman, was on compassionate leave due to a bereavement. Even so, everything has been a roaring success. Help and encouragement came with Emma Hargreaves, a trainee teacher just about to qualify who is destined to go far. The class is Year 5, which means it is made up of nine and ten-year-olds.

Malika Booker and Emma Hargreaves                   Photo by Richard Wilcocks

Day One

Malika began by reading a couple of her own poems, one about a little boy lost in a maze (she was once poet in residence at Hampton Court) and one about a cat that had to be dismissed from a household. ‘How long does it take to write a poem?’ asked a boy afterwards.

‘I always draft and redraft a poem until I think it’s finished,’ Malika told him. ‘That could take a week. One of my poems took eleven years. We’ll soon be doing lots of redrafting.’

‘A poem is made up of truth, with a little bit of lie and some exaggeration, like in a story.’ She mentioned the story she is currently writing for under-fives, ‘Mangolina’, about a girl who finds her lost carnival wings.

 Then she introduced a method she has used before – ‘writing is like cooking’ – and the children were soon making their personal collections of ingredients, all around the chosen theme of Rivers. ‘Wind in the Willows’ has been on their curriculum since May. After explaining what onomatopoeia is, sounds made by running and rushing water were chosen, and after explaining the meaning of ‘personification’, various creatures were chosen to represent an ever-changing watercourse, with plenty of snakes to begin with.

More inspiration came in the form of ‘The River’, a poem by Caribbean poet Valerie Bloom, which begins:

The River’s a wanderer,

A nomad, a tramp,

He never chooses one place

To set up his camp.

This was read aloud, then, after asking a few questions, Malika finished with, 'We’ll write list poems. I’ll come to that tomorrow.’

Day Two

‘Let’s have some good similes. What does your water do?’ Almost all hands shot up, imaginations fermenting quickly, responses including ‘my water bellows like a red deer’ and ‘the water is like a train, fast and furious’.

‘What about doing words, verbs? What does water do?’ It dances, leaps, trickles, attacks, manoeuvres amongst the suggestions. ‘And if we’re thinking about personification (remember yesterday?) what else can it do?’ It might whisper, or talk, or sing, or spit, or scream, or all of those.

‘Let’s have more nouns, names of things connected with your river.’ An alligator, a magical creature, a ghost, a falcon, a cheetah, a sloth, pebbles, seaweed and an assassin were some of the items to select from the ingredients list.

Moods? Anger was popular. ‘So what does anger feel like? Is it feathers brushing against your forehead? Or is it red hot coals burning in your eyes?’

Writing the drafts of the poem began. It had to be a list, with each item a couple of lines long, beginning with ‘The river is…’

Day Three

Most of the session was spent writing, with Malika circulating amongst the tables, sometimes issuing reminders of what had been done during the previous two days. Towards the end, she spent time creating a background soundscape to go with a future performance, with each table allocated a watery sound (shhhh, fizzzz, plop for example) to practise. This would be a background against which each poem would be read.

Sadly, the performance in an assembly can only take place in a couple of weeks’ time, but Emma Hargreaves will pick up from this point and act as the producer. Some selected lines from the finished poems will be added soon, probably within the next fortnight.

Selected lines:

My river screams

like it is being

tortured.

 

My river growls

like it hasn’t eaten

in years.

(Mussa G.)

 

My river is a king cobra

that slithers through land -

if you get too close

it might bite.

 

My river is a fearless boy -

nothing can hurt him - he crashes

into trees - shakes and falls -

try hurt him and you will be

finished.

(Bilal A.)

 

My river slithers like a snake

     sneaky and stealthy

but then comes to a burst

     like a bear

with an enormous thirst

 

If you are as quiet as an ant

you can feel the red eyes of the

captain’s bird staring at you from the

bottom of the river.

(Zayyuan V.)

 

The water bellows like a red deer

And echoes for the world to hear.

(Haseena A.)

 

My river is a haunted little girl

Who is lonely in the playground.

(Amna A.)

 

My river is a classical singer and dancer.

She is a teenager.

When she sings the waterfall falls down.

(Rassan E.)

 

Funded by your councillors of the Inner North West Community Committee: 

Headingley & Hyde Park, Little London & Woodhouse, Weetwood