Lemonade Anemone

 I'm currently working as artist in residence at the National Civil War Centre , a lovely little museum in Newark-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire.  I'm in the studio at the museum for three days a week, chatting with members of the public, leading creative activities, and writing poems and stories about the museum's collection. One of the first things that struck me about my new workspace was how beautiful the view from the window was! I can see out over the rooftops all the way to the church and across the treetops in the park. It's gorgeous. So, I decided to ask museum visitors to help me write a poem all about the view. I asked everyone who came to the studio to write down three words to describe what they saw from the window, then used those words to build a poem.  Here's my first draft. The words in bold (including the title) are the ones suggested by visitors.  Chim-chiminey From these heights,  everything looks different: squat square chimneys share space...

I'm so lucky that I get to work with children and young people as part of my day job. I teach creative writing, which is the best subject, and I won't hear a word said against it!  And I'm good at it, too.  But, I'm often reluctant to do anything too tricky or "formal" with my young writers, because  A. I want them to really enjoy the sessions, and  B. the contemporary poetry scene is not that enthusiastic about formal poetry structures.  That being said, I've been working with a particular group of teenagers for a while now, through my freelance contract with Writing East Midlands and, a few months' ago, we got to talking about constrained writing techniques.  They seemed keen, so I thought I'd set them a challenge!  So, I brought in an Abecedarian poem called Hummingbird Abecedarian by Aimee Nezhukumatathil .  An Abecedarian is a type of poem where each line starts with a different letter of the alphabet: the first line starts with the letter ...

Last year, I started puttng together my first ever play, KINGMAKER, and I documented the research and development process here .  It was a really fun project, and despite some trepidation about working in a new medium, I really enjoyed the creative process of working with a director, actors and a producer to develop the show. Sadly, our second Arts Council bid didn't get funding, so we decided to put our plans for touring the show on hold until later this year.  The play is a quirky little comedy about village life, friendship, and ellaborate archeological hoaxes, and we originally conceived it as a piece to tour rural venues in the Midlands.  So, while we were waiting for autumn to roll around, we were invited to showcase the play at the National Rural Touring Forum , a conference specifically set up to support theatre in rural places.  We were given a five-minute slot at the conference to showcase the play, in the hopes of connecting with other touring schemes and ...

In my day job, I work with organisations across the arts and charity sectors, supporting people to find their creativity through writing. So, I’m always on the hunt for poems, images and music to use as inspiration for poetry.   And this short film, directed by André Musgrove and choreographed and performed by Ariadna Hafez, really caught my eye.  It’s called The Deepest Dance, and shows Hafez dancing around shipwrecks under the ocean off the coast of Barbados. The film is glorious and the behind the scenes making of video is also well worth a watch!  Here's my poem, inspired by the film:  The Deepest Dance  Waterlogged,  she haunts the wreck. A lithe-limbed phantom  of sea salt circumstance. Slick ocean swirls like a spell, suspended  between surface and sea floor,  twisting through coral-covered ruins;  ships brought low by tide and time.  Submerged metal roughness, red with rust,  this bride of barnacles, gentle as gos...

Univocalisms were first devised by the Oulipo , a group of writers, artists and thinkers based in Paris in the mid-twentieth century. The Univocalism is one of their most famous inventions: a piece of writing that excludes four out of the five vowel sounds.  Let me explain. For example, if you write an O univocalism, you're not allowed to use any words that include the letters A, E, I, or U, and if you do an E univocalism, you're not allowed to use  any words that include  the letters A, I, O, or U.  It sounds hard (because it is) but it's a fascinating challenge, and I really love it because it can get out of a writing rut, and help you create pieces that you'd never write otherwise! This is my favourite univocalism that I've ever written, and I think I really like it because it's so deeply, unrelentingly silly, and because it breaks the rule that it follows. I'm dead rebellious, me.    Merbles   Yer ersk mer ter explern merserlf  Bert mer rerply...

We did it!  In case this is your first time here (Hello!) my name’s Leanne, and normally, I’m a poet. But this year, I’ve been working with a team of creative people on a Research and Development programme for a play that I’ve written.  It’s called Kingmaker and it’s a comedy about good intentions, bad ideas, and finding a place to belong. Our story follows a tour guide in a sleepy rural village, and the problems that arise when an internationally important archaeological specimen is discovered in the local churchyard!  You can read more about my journey through the R&D process in the previous three blogposts .  Last Friday, we invited a selection of cool people to come to see a work in progress version of the show. The audience watched four scenes from the play, and heard from the creative team speak about their ambitions for next steps. Then, we facilitated a Q&A where audience members could give feedback on what they’d seen.  It was a really useful ...

I’ve just sent two weeks thinking, writing, re-thinking and re-writing. A couple of weeks’ ago, our creative team did a week of research and development , working on the script for a new play that I wrote earlier this year.  By the end of the first week of R&D, we’d removed the interactive elements, improved the narrative pacing, moved the interval, added five new scenes, and completely re-imagined the ending!  All in a week's work!  The next stage of the project is a sharing of the show with industry professionals and invited guests on Friday 6th September. So, I had two weeks to do all the re-writes, before rehearsals started up again.  Given how many notes I’d made, and how many changes we'd initiated, it seemed like a Herculean task. So, I did what I always do when faced with a monumental writing commission. I procrastinated.  One clean bathroom, two mowed lawns, and email inbox clear-out, and a fully-hoovered house later, I figured I’d really better ge...

 As a poet, I mostly write stuff on my own. I draft a poem, maybe I take it to an open mic, or to my crit group for suggestions, then I polish it up. Perhaps it even gets published somewhere – if I’m very lucky! But I'm used to a pretty solitary writing process.  So, I was a bit apprehensive going into the first week of research and development on a new play I’m working on, in collaboration with director Vivi Bayliss .  Theatremaking is often a collective process – the actors, director and other members of creative team get involved with writing or devising the story – and I was a little bit wary about that aspect of the project.  I – like many creative people – really hate being told what to do.  But, I also knew that Vivi is an excellent director and a very safe pair of hands. So, when I showed up on the Monday morning at the rehearsal space, I was ready to experience a new way of making work.  But I’m getting ahead of myself. What is an R&D in the c...

I’ve been writing poetry for about twenty years now, and I mostly write narrative poems. So, when I started going up to the Edinburgh Fringe in the late 2010s, I got really into the idea of producing long-form live literature shows.  The first show I wrote was called Skip, Skip, Skip , and it was an autobiographical, one-hour piece that I performed at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe. It was a nostalgic and heartfelt show about music, friendships, and accidentally becoming a teenage goth in rural Norfolk in 2002.  I really loved the process of writing the show. I liked telling a cohesive story in a long-form, theatrical context – something I’d never done before – and I loved making something that really seemed to resonate with people. But I found the performance side of the process really challenging, especially having to learn an hour’s worth of words. My brain just doesn’t work like that, and the nerves really got to me.  Next time I write something like that, I thought to mys...