Hello all!

On a bright and sunny afternoon in March, we ran a poetry workshop at Wareham Library called Playing with Poetry. It was brilliant to sink our teeth into some unique language and well written verse. We wrote a group nonesense poem by picking out favourite words and images from famous poems (but altering some spellings to how the students heard the word). We think it worked really well, what do you think?:

Jub Jub bird with stony paws in a crumpety tree,

waterfall slippery and stuffy shore.

Jabawoki and Crangle Wangle Quee

splintered verser with ribbons

while eating

wiggle bubble gum and slime in

alphabet stew.

The time flew by but everyone came up with some brilliant poems and thought about how to present them to give the right impression to the reader.

Last weekend we flittered around Kilve court with some Funtastic Fairies. Lots of interesting fairies came to visit, with Knot fairies trying to knot our hair, Scavenger fairies sneaking around to steal food scraps and Dream fairies helping us to sleep well at night.

All our fluttering fairies:

The minibus took us to St. Audries bay on Saturday morning, and the wind blustered off the sea, tugging at our hair and slapping our cheeks. But there were lots of interesting places for fairies to be hiding from the weather, such as small caves in the cliffs, and green draped nooks behind a high spattering waterfall. We then journeyed to an old Quarry which nature has reclaimed. We sat in the sunshine by a still pond and listened to birds chatting in the tree tops. Everyone came up with some scene setting descriptions to help them write their stories later.

The rest of the weekend was spent making wings, writing stories, hunting for fairies in the dark, and preparing for the presentation (which went without a hitch). We hope to see some of these fairies fluttering back to Kilve one day to create some creatures or design wonderful worlds!

The flower bank where we searched for fairies on Saturday night:

We have a very busy week coming up, starting with a morning workshop at Wareham Library on Saturday the 4th of April, called For the Love of Books. This course will celebrate reading and writing, and look at the techniques that famous authors use to create powerful stories and memorable images.

Then on Tuesday we have Tall Tales and Wonderful Worlds at Higher Green Farm in Shaftesbury, and on Wednesday the same course at ArtSway in the New Forest (Artsway is fully booked). Tall Tales is a course about magical places to set your story, and we'll be designing maps and constucting world models from scrap and art materials. Messy but fun!

Our new newsletter will be out within the next few days, let us know your email address if you would like to receive it. The poetry competition this issue is for a nonsense poem of up to 30 lines. The deadline is 30th June and the winner will have their poem published on our website and receive a personalised Creative Creatures notebook. The winner of the wet weather poetry competition was Verity Sutcliffe, see her winning poem on our website!

Bye for now,

Jennifer

(and Rosie)