We had a wonderful session with Liz Jennings. See Liz’s work here: https://www.lizjenningswriter.com/
Liz helped a group of us to think about:
*What is poetry and why it might be useful for capturing
voices, feelings and thoughts in your group.
*We used a technique called acrostic poetry (click on this link to find out more Acrostic Poems ) to introduce ourselves – this resulted in finding out quite alot about each other not least that two young assistant psychologists had no idea who Cliff Richard is and could be seen looking particularly puzzled on screen and spotted googling away.
We also used a technique called List where we were asked to look through a window and then used our observations to choose 3 items, in addition to first line word’ Window’, which became the key word in each line of a four line poem. We were then given time to add to those words.
Hey presto we all produced two poems each and learnt so much about each other! A great technique to adopt and use in groups.
* We also explore shared reading . Find out more about shared reading here https://www.thereader.org.uk/what-we-do/shared-reading/
We read two of these poems aloud and then discussed what the poem meant to us November Poems . This was a very powerful process. The poem was read aloud twice and the talked about aspects of the poem and the feelings it brought to us.
One attendee said:
“Thank you so much for letting me join today’s session. I’m up to my eyes in it with training and other work.The poetry session was just what I needed. It really made me think and do something I’ve not done for ages which was listen or read a poem.
I also think Liz is absolutely amazing and has such a wonderful way of getting the best out of people – very person-centred. I’d love to work with her and our groups I think it’s something we could all join in with as equals just as we did today (another fabulous aspect of the session).”
We will be running a shared Christmas words session with Liz on Wednesday December 15th – please register to attend here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/204513775207
If you would like to suggest a poem, an excerpt from a book with a Christams theme or the lyrics of a song please email with your suggestions before Friday 10th December
