Thursday, 13 March 2008

Creative writing activity. Week 5 Picture it in Words

To complete this activity you'll need access to some artwork. Some of these tasks are specific to the Cooper Gallery where local artists are displaying their 'responses' to the gallery collection. However it is flexible and you will still find this activity useful. Have a go!

Explore the artwork in the gallery and...

  • Look for really interesting relationships between the Cooper Gallery collection piece and the new Hen piece. Choose a pairing. Can you discover a story/ poem in the space between?
  • Landscape - timelessness - find a landscape depicted and put a character of your own in this setting. Use the juxtaposition to explore time - or whatever you like.
  • Find a piece that tells you a story - write the ending first.
  • Find a piece of jewellery you can link with a character in your head. Use a detailed description of the piece as part of a story/ poem. Present? Lost? Stolen? Found? etc.
  • Find an element of magic you could explore.
  • Choose an artefact and give it a strange / original purpose. Put it into a poem or story or...
  • If one (or more) of these sparks something for you, see if you can find what one of these artists explored around it, then write...

veiled, broken china, window-sill

flower-girl, sewing-box, thorn tree

frame, coast, Green Man

vessel, memory, 'Royal, Courtier, Bishop...'

Activity by A. Hamblen.©

1 comment:

Vasiliki said...

I really enjoyed this activity and really benefitted from the feedback session. There were only a few of us which meant we had a useful discussion about poetry and what constitutes good poetry.

I originally started out with this inspired by Gillian Tyler's artwork called the windowsill. (www.gilliantyler.co.uk):

Rusty nail
curling round
a broken butterfly.
A purple piece, china men
a scroll
common willow
precious pieces
laid across the
windowsill.

Crackled glaze
marks tiny squares
fragments framed
by sea-softened corners
hint at lives
lived long
now gone.

Obviously a raw piece. Some feedback I got was- don't put in lists. So I went back and now it looks like this:

The Windowsill.

Crackled glaze
marks
tiny squares
fragments framed
by sea-softened
corners
hint at lives
lived long

now gone.

Precious pieces laid
across the windowsill.©