Playing with Poetry

We had a lot of fun playing with poetry in the Hidden Gardens on Saturday 18th May and Saturday 20th July as part of this summer’s Wild About Gardens events.

For the first event in May, we asked people to help us make a Circle Poem. Our inspiration was the poem Roundabout from Crazy Mayonnaisy Mum by Julia Donaldson. Julia’s poem takes a two-word phrase and makes new two-word phrases by adding a new word to the last word of the previous phrase. Because the afternoon was all about window ledge gardening, we started our poem with the phrase Window Box and that was followed by Box Fresh, then Fresh Air and so on. We ended up with a poem that went all around the edge of the Gingko tree.

At the second event in July, we made a Poetry Hunt using two poems that we cut up into snippets and hid in the gardens. The poems we used were Garlic by Finola Scott and Listening to the Trees by Mandy Haggith. Each poem was divided into six pieces and we asked people to search for them by taking a walk around the different parts of the Hidden Gardens. At the end of their hunt, they had put the poems back together again.

You can have a look at the photos we took.

Thanks for all your ideas!

Sarah and Claire from The Write Stuff.