Category: The Word Shed
Do a line at The Word Shed…
Rochester’s longest communal poem (probably)
Here is the collaborative, collective poem that we wrote as part of the Word Shed’s visit to the Rochester LitFest Garden Party.
The watcher of the night awoke,
He opened one great eye and spoke,
Finally, this is me,
He croaked.
The princess in her ivory tower
Tainted by her life.
Maximillian Mouse, her only friend and confidante
Felt furry furry furry
Furry, furry furious furry
Feet of rodents.
He croaked again:
She’s ignoring me
Her mind had wandered out to sea.
He croaked again, while she was on the waves.
I’m so hot, I can’t think
GET ME OUT OF HERE!
Rodents don’t shed a tear.
Nothing feels worse maybe even better than this,
Even when staring down the abyss.
Time is precious, so use it well.
Melting, smelting, steaming,
Heat raged from the factory beyond.
Shouting, screaming, yelling, heard from the factory beyond.
She kissed the frog, and in despair, it croaked
And left her standing there.
She laughed and thought,
Everything is happening perfectly.
I’m so hot
Save me from this wretched place.
I’m stretched out like a tabby cat in the sun.
And she dreamed her dream to sail far.
Long may the maiden voyage float.
Word Shed on the road
Rochester’s longest communal poem (probably)
The sun came out and we temporarily transformed the smoking lean-to at the Good Intent into the Word Shed for the afternoon of 14 July 2013.
Writing activities to try out included:
* contributing a line to Rochester’s longest communal poem (probably)
* Cut-n-paste poetry
* Roll the dice poetry or prose.
A great afternoon was had by all and we will post some of the poems – including probably Rochester’s longest – in due course.
The Seed Compendium
The Seed Compendium contains large selection of additional creative writing from the Fuse Festival and our WordShops. You can read it online or download it from the Words page.
It is 50 pages long and really gives a fantastic snapshot of the creativity we encountered in Medway during the Fuse Festival. There are poems and writing from all ages in the booklet and we hope that you will enjoy it, and excuse any typing errors we might have made!
If you would like to get hold of a printed copy of The Seed Catalogue, our much shorter booklet, there are still some copies at Chatham library.
The Word Shed at Rochester Literature Festival Summer Garden Party
We are delighted to say we will be taking over the shed in the garden of the Good Intent, as a temporary squatted home for the Word Shed during the afternoon of the Rochester Literature Festival Summer Garden Party!
Come along and sit in our lean-to between 12noon and 4pm on Sunday 14th July, at the Good Intent Pub in John Street, Rochester, where you can do some writing themed around summer. The party will feature a delightful cultural mix of performances, open mic, storytelling and a special edition of Seasonally Effected.
There might even be an opportunity for you to sit on Charlie’s Chair… wait and see what that is!
See more on the Rochester Literature festival website.
And that’s it for the Fuse Festival this year!
Happy Word Shedders!
We had a fantastic response to The Word Shed at the Fuse Festival. We had almost 100 people from ages 3 (with some help from mum!) to 90, who took some time out from the festival (and the sometimes rainy/windy weather), to sit in the warmth and shelter of the shed to do a bit of writing. A lot of those who visited had never had a go at creative writing before, or hadn’t really done any since school, and told us they really enjoyed the opportunity to share their stories.
For those littlies who weren’t quite up to writing in the shed, we also had large pieces of paper on the pavement in Gillingham and Chatham, where they could express themselves in words or pictures, and we had a brilliant response to this too, with one visitor telling us she had come specially from Gillingham to Chatham the next day, as her children had enjoyed writing on the pavement paper so much!
On the last day of Fuse, we launched our Seed Catalogue booklet. This is a creative writing pamphlet containing a selection of writing done during our creative writing workshops (WordShops) in the run up to the festival. We handed out a copy to anyone who came to the shed who wanted one, and also did some readings from this new publication. A few remaining copies will shortly be available from the libraries where we did our WordShops. You can also download it from the Words page.
We will be typing up and getting all the photos together this week and next, and hopefully have a full PDF of everything we could type up ready to download by the end of the month.
Here are some bits of feedback we received:
“This is an excellent, inclusive event. I really enjoyed it and so did my daughter!”
“Being under pressure to think is something I’ve not experienced since exams a decade or so ago and is a singularly uncomfortable experience… But quite good fun!”
“More local artists to be included in the Fuse Festival – Wonderful Word Shed – more, more, more!”
“I heart Word Shed. I think it is cool and fun. I would love to see it next year.”
“We only came to Chatham today because the kids enjoyed the Word Shed at Gillingham yesterday.”
“It’s a wonderful idea, I will come back with the grandchildren.”
Once again, thanks to Fuse festival (The Word Shed was developed with the aid of a Spark Commission), and to Passmores who loaned us the shed for the weekend.
If you would like to hear more about ME4Writers’ future projects, please send us an email, or follow our blog.
The word on the street…
Fuse Festival update!
A shedder in Gillingham
We’ve had a great response to our Word Shed project this weekend, so far.
We positioned the shed in Gillingham on Friday and yesterday we were in a windblown Chatham, along with the other acts in Streetart day.
Today, we are in Rochester Castle Gardens, and it’s your last chance to contribute to the online version of our publication The Seed Catalogue (PDF, 1.22mb).
Today we will be doing a writing session and a reading session, where we read extracts from writing collected during the project.
See you there! (Bring a brolly…)
The Seed Catalogue
Our new publication
We are delighted to be able to launch our new collaborative booklet of prose and poetry ‘The Seed Catalogue’ from tomorrow at the FUSE Medway Festival.
The booklet has been put together from contributions to our wordshops over the past month, and showcases writing from 24 local writers, some of whom had not written before, some of whom are already writing.
The booklet has a range of writing inspired by the topics of Medway and Festival, and it was a delight to read the varied contributions and put the booklet together.
You can come along and do some writing too, in the Shed during the Festival, where you can find us in Gillingham on the High Street on Friday, at Chatham near H Samuels on Saturday and at Rochester Castle Gardens for the Big Picnic on Sunday. Bring a rug, and a picnic and you can listen to us read from the new booklet.
We will be typing up as many of the contributions from the weekend as we can and adding them to our online version of the publication – ‘The Seed Compendium’. We will also be tweeting live poems from the Festival, follow us on @WordShed.
The whole project has been made possible with a Spark commission from the FUSE Medway Festival.
Strood Library Wordshop
Words in progress…
Today we had another really great ‘Wordshop’ at Strood Library. We did some speed haikus, chose words from the Plant pot and planted our word labels in the seed tray… We wrote a story about a picture of Medway and we found out a little bit about psychogeography…
If you would like to find out what else we did and contribute to our new publication, please come along to one of our next Wordshops:
Saturday 25 May at Walderslade Village Library, 10.30am-12.30pm
Saturday 8 June at Chatham Library, 1.30pm-3.30pm
Book by calling 01634 337799.
Thanks to all attendees and the library staff and Friends.
Photoshoot
Sam and Lorraine visited Passmores (the people providing our shed), to do a photoshoot today.
Here (with the aid of some Photoshop magic) they are, getting ready to do some writing in the shed!
Sam and Lorraine of ME4Writers trying out the shed for size!
Rochester Library Wordshop
Inspirational words
We held the first of our ‘Wordshops’ at Rochester Library on Saturday 11 May. Some great writing was done and we are looking forwards to the next one at Strood next Saturday! Here’s a taster of what was written.
Celebration
Party poppers explode like shaken Champagne corks escaping their prison, with coloured string trailblazing across the space, crash-landing on unsuspecting heads.
Bubbles are poured with aplomb, a river released from its dam, and glasses are chink-chinked to celebrate this alcoholic freedom.
Heads bob back and forth in uncontrollable mirth as if award-winning comedians let rip their rib-tickling act. Or maybe, just maybe, they were auditioning to be a nodding dog placed on the shelf at the back of a car.
Presents are pawed open, like a puppy shredding a lawn to get to long-buried hidden bone-shaped treasure.
Sentimental speeches are slurred in the direction of the nearest spectator and stories long forgotten, sometimes purposely, are bounced from one guest to the next, like helium balloons.
Hugs get thrown like confetti, men leaning into each other like the start of a house of cards, each a mutual crutch.
Then the clock strikes midnight, pumpkins reappear and a premeditated pharmaceutical strike of two aspirin and a tanker of water are religiously imbibed.
….. Thanks to all who attended, and also to the staff at the library and the Friends of the Library!
The Word Shed 