Mentors Blog.

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Dear All,

Good luck with Big Chill, sorry i can’t be there, down in the South West we’ll be flying the flag for Apples and Snakes at the Port Eliot Lit Fest. Emma’s piece is ready for an audience, her different voices will live , and the imagery sing out as it already does on the page. as you can see from her blog, she wants to use the films merge them with the words, and present it all as a visual poem. I’m no help as a mentor re technical’s!, what’s interesting about this project, is that the virtual nature of it as pushed people, all of us, to make the words visual, landscapes for the words..so from looking at what the poets have posted, and from talking to Emma, she is now keen to push that, many of the pieces have become Poetry films/documentaries, which is possibly an unexpected outcome of the project. the first raw films that Emma made , have directly influenced the work, and had an atmosphere of those corridors and closed doors of the hostel.

on another subject, i had to write something very quickly for an arts council conference on engaging audieneces in literature…so thought some of you maybe interested, as i used “MPOY” as an example of good practise, and how , in a recent workshop for Apples and Snakes with young people in care, i read the young people Emma and Rukus’s work. (Hope you don’t mind Emma and Rukus)  here it is.

Anna’s response to ACE litary doc.

Re Poetry section in particular.

Poetry seems to me the most direct way of engaging young people in literature. It’s in their culture, song lyrics, street language, and digital language. I as a practioner, often use poetry in its most instant form to engage young people who struggle or have been put off writing by years of them having to plan and grapple with grammar clauses and the many rules they have to fit in when ever they do a piece of creative writing, “has your sentence got a connective? Has it got a subjective objective sub clause blah blah blah”. I’ve seen their eyes glaze over.

Poetry and the writing of it can by instantaneous, spontaneous, hit the nail right on the head. I have used the poems I’ve created as scripts for animations when working in schools with filmmakers, visual artists etc.

I recently did a workshop with Carefree, young people in care, ( a relationship first seeded with support from KEAP, grown many fruits since) to create poems for them to perform at Port Eliot lit fest, Apples and Snakes, the brilliant poetry organisation had booked me. Carefree are a challenging group, often marginalised in the school system, many terrified of writing, can’t see the relevance. we wrote poems on the theme of home and place to fit In with the “apples and snakes” project “My place or yours”. I read them some of the work that poets from all over the country have been writing as part of this project, including the poet I’m mentoring, Emma Mcgordon, whose work is based around a Hostel for the young homeless. Carefree were grabbed, sat up, ears perked, mobile’s put away.

A young and up and coming Cornish performance poet, Callum Mitchell came with me to help, pick up some teaching skill and to add the “cool” element to a workshop being led by me, middle aged lady.

I put him on the spot and got him to perform a couple of his poems about Friday nights in Penzance..Immediatley the excitement in the room went up a notch. One lad, who secretly at home wrote poems about being in care , who’d been reluctant all day, suddenly wanted to tell his poems , especially to Callum. This lads poems were extraordinary. And you could see the light of possibility in his eyes.

Such is the power of hearing it live, writing it live, getting it up on it’s feet.

I have a feeling that in the cities , there are more opportunities to engage young people in live literature, “Apples and Snakes” is a fabulous model for this, check out their educational projects, performance programme, (i.e. young peoples slams etc) We need more of these kind of projects in Cornwall, we need young performance poets in our secondary schools raising the game, not just once, but once a week, value for money indeed it would be, we need to big up and support the excellent young peoples tent at Port Eliot festival run by Angelina and Ollie from Rogue Theatre, it needs top billing on their posters, as it is the most exciting , vibrant thing at that festival.

Imagination is the key. I feel we achieved this in Tipofyourtongue, ACE supported, partnerships with KEAP….

Some of the things we did.

1. Poetry fruit machine., in schools, at events.

2. Grow a poet , mentoring young poets, putting on their work in Club 2K penzance, putting their poems in “Poems in a Tin”

3. National poetry day installations in the Co-Op, Art galleries, on the streets.

4. Hit and Run poets, sending perfomance poets into schools to perform poetry hits in lessons….very successful….again , part of national poetry day.

Seeding can be vital in the growth of an idea. IE, a little bit of money from KEA, to work with carefree and the young carers project as grown to them both becoming mini arts organisations in their own rights and gaining their own funding, all through the medium of poetry and literature.

A little bit of monies from “Apples and Snakes” now means that the Carefree young people get to perform their words at a growing, is somewhat elite literary festival. But who cares, ? they are going to it.

one of the Poems from carefree.

Homeless man.

His hair is a Tsnami and trees blowing in the wind,

His beard is seaweed in a rough sea and a tangle of shoelaces,

He is a three legged fox hunting.

He is a haunted house, his breath is old fish,

His eyes are candles burning,

His heart beats slowly, about to burst.

By Merlin.

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