Category: Uncategorized
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Nature defies rain At least this wet summer isn’t stopping everything… … or everyone. True, these haven’t got much to do with poetry, but there are some ducks (less orderly ones, I’m afraid) in my kids’ book, Wildlife Poems, now available for just £2.99 + £1 p&p; £3 at events. Details on Book (for kids)…
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Five Hollow Rings 8.30pm, Friday, 27th July, 2012: the Olympic Opening Ceremony is girding its loins; I’m trimming the hedge. The stillness is eerie: the street, the village, the whole of this south Wales valley has gone quiet. There is not a car on the road, a step, voice, stir: even the dogs and cats…
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A sunny Sunday! Warm, calm, balmy – and hardly believable. SUNSHINE! Not that we’ve quite adjusted yet. Sunshades were still down outside our local pubs as I passed this lunchtime; bare, unprepared heads reddening around the beer garden tables; unprotected eyes squinting at ill-chosen coffees. The pub menus were behind the times too. Propped proudly…
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A Sunday in July (July?) Wake to a murky half-light. Open curtains: no lighter. Check watch: 10 a.m. Cloudburst spraying through window: slam shut. Pull off bed-socks and swap for day ones. Huddled in winter dressing-gown, slippers, and clenched-teeth-determination, I stagger downstairs, bearing last night’s hot-water-bottle. Husband already up: pelt of rain on glass woke…
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Sat with SatNav I was sat with SatNav as usual this morning – welcome company as I sped through the quivering dawn towards a steely skyline. I was heading for a primary school in Port Talbot, 30 miles from home, and was glad of her company – well, until she slid into her fractious mood.…
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Echoing Place Names Just back from a trip to Kent, a six-hour drive from home. No, a children’s poetry workshopper can’t afford to be picky about places. Besides, the travel provides fuel for inspiration between those all-day sessions of trying to inspire others in hot, cramped, stuffy classrooms. Not that I was expecting to glean…
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Teenage Talent Anyone who’d like to see some wonderful poetry by youngsters, or fancies a trip through the past – take a glance at the new poetry displays on my Project and Young Writers‘ pages! The poets – the poems on those two pages are by 11-12 year-olds from Rhymney Comprehensive School, Caerphilly Borough, S.…
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When the sea came into the school Golden sand and see-through sea was our dream last Thursday morning. By ‘our dream’ I mean the shared vision of three classes of young children, and me. We were in the big, sunny hall of a primary school in Weston-super-Mare, preparing a seaside poem. No, we didn’t dwell…
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Too Vibrant for Verse Just back from a sunset saunter through a green and golden sea: the meadowland behind our house. Half way round I realised that its splendour was beyond capture, as so often with nature: that no poem – no words, picture, film, music, dance – nothing could catch and contain it.…
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Olympic Poetry ‘Olympics’ was my topic in a recent school workshop, and very Olympic it was, too! It bounced its way round the classrooms with Olympic resilience – well, it had to: it was a day of hurdles. I’d throw the theme at a class of kids, they’d catch it, and between us we’d spin…
Kate Williams 