Heroes and Heroines
National Poetry Day 09 was celebrated yesterday by schools across Scotland. The Scottish Poetry Library ran a variety of events from 12.30pm to late, from a relaxed reading group looking at the postcards produced by the SPL on this year’s theme of Heroes and Heroines to library staff and its reader in residence reading poems aloud.
www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk
Please be seated
Castle Douglas Primary in Dumfries and Galloway worked with poet Liz Niven and designer Sara Booth to produce a Poetry Chair, which they took to the library yesterday. There were drop-in workshops for people to create original ways of carrying the poems that matter to them: mix and match between paper crafts with librarian Julie Johnstone, and mad alternative crafts with Knitty Kitty. MP3 posts throughout the library played a variety of all sorts of poems.
Listen to this
Elsewhere around the country, Gorgie Farm in Edinburgh invited children to compose a poem in honour of their favourite animal and offered prizes from free sponsorship of the said animal to book tokens and a farm “goodie” bag.
Carluke High ran an event last Friday, when pupils and staff recited their own and other poems and talked about their heroesheroines in front of an invited audience of parents, staff and pupils. The performance was filmed and shown at the school’s open evening on Wednesday.
And Inverkeithing High broadcast its poetry recital live to the school’s radio station, where the public could tune in at 1pm on National Poetry Day to listen in.
www.radiowaves.co.ukInverkeithing
Mercury rising
The Association for Scottish Literary Studies has commissioned metaphrog to make a comic adaptation of Edwin Morgan’s poem, “The First Men on Mercury”, to celebrate National Poetry Day, as a way of interesting children (and adults) in poetry, visually. The story spans four, full- colour A4 pages and was made available to all pupils in Glasgow secondary schools. The web version will remain online and include teaching notes and behind the scenes information on the making of the comic. Metaphrog will also continue to work with schools and FE institutions to develop the project.
www.metaphrog.commercury.
