#bath festivals

  The Bath Festivals‘ Write Team was a creative writing project designed to develop pupil confidence and engagement in their learning. The project, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation brought together an arts organisation, local authority and schools to share experience and skills, in the support of those pupils who ‘play truant in the mind’. (Collins. J (1998) Playing Truant in the Mind: the…

The power of poetry (free download) #NATEconf

Here are the text and ppt presentations of my NATE Conference 2014 keynote speech on The Power of Poetry.

PDF text: The Power of Poetry NATE Conference 2014

PPT: The Power of Poetry

  Creativity, Confidence and Challenge, The Write Team project final report, is available as a free download here: The Write Team – Creativity, Confidence and Challenge

For Lorien Kaack

words: #sorcerer #overlap #sister-in-law #canoodle

Written by Kali Milburn

For the mysterious 'no-name'

words: #licked stamp #richly #lava lamp #very short knight

Written by Kali Milburn

                                                                                                                   Being born into the most prestigious family on this side of the hill made Terrowin uncomfortable. Of course he was able to frolic; reprimanding younger page boys, chasing well-dressed ladies of the court, luring them back to his richly decorated manor house with the promise of mead and a kiss between the thighs.

His only trouble consisted of jeers from other knights. To begin with, the hearty laughs and calls of ‘artless whelp’ roused a nervous smile, however after months of teasing, the words now made him cringe and sweat into his mail. Terrowin had no trouble being a very short knight on the jousting lanes, his meager size did nothing to weigh down the horse, and he did well to dodge the oncoming lances. However when appearing in public (as a knight must often do) he felt terribly inadequate at 4'2 against the other knights. He could often hear the echoes of almost-silent laughter from inside the metal helms.

For Ellie Maher

words: #clothes peg #vapidly #completely #chase

Written by Kali Milburn

                                                                                                                   Humming softly, the pale girl in the duck-egg dress almost drifted into the hillside fog. She went about her work vapidly, with a boredom that showcased how often this same task had been exercised. Hanging up the sheets was the hardest; the dull frostiness of the linen chewing her fingertips, the length of the material stretching her arms through the shoulders, leaving a dull knotting sensation across the muscles. It was tedious task at the least, each clothes peg nipping at her flesh like wooden rabbit jaws. The early morning mist pinched her bare ankles as she stood only in velveteen slippers against the dew-dropped greenery.

A sense of deafened melancholy roamed the hills this morning, the death of her late father still hung about the house and the grounds. A sigh seeped from her bitten lips as she bent low to grasp the last of the garments; a soft pink pair of knickers.

For Michael Probart

words: #flag #pig pen #child's crown #train driver

Written by Kali Milburn

                                                                                                                   The great flag was hoisted up above the pig pen, signifying a change. Since the child had been ‘removed’ from the throne, deaths had occurred much less frequently. The pikes towering above the pen’s walls were headless nowadays, albeit they did look quite bare.

A judicious vote was taken among the piglets. Another child could never be appointed as King Pig; surely the last one had proven that point. The child’s crown had been near destroyed; fears of tainted metal from the depths of the sheep enclosure had been passed around like a tar-greased tobacco pipe. Perhaps melting down the bars that the ewes once chewed had never promised to form an ideal crown.

The piglets were fond of a kind man who frequently visited the farmyard to scatter scraps of turnip and corn. They knew not of his name, but his hands forever reeked of diesel fuel. His cap, navy uniform and stench suggested to the piglets that a profession in trains was involved. 'Fabulous, a traveller who has seen the world' they trilled.

Written by Sophie Atkin-Smith from the draw of:

hairspray

ace of spades

amorally

dinosaur

______________________________________________________

Dario had been the dog groomer to go to for years, dominating the canine style scene since the 1980s. He’d been young, fresh faced when he first competed in his local town hall. He politely smiled at the shrivelled figures of old dears, forever cooing over their trimmed and fluffed poodles. Shook the clammy hand of the head judge, the librarian out of contest time. The middle aged men with cashmere sweaters carefully knotted over their shoulders tut-tutted sadly at the new-comer. “Not a canary’s hope…” rode on the wet-dog air that circulated through the portable heaters. Yet Dario had stunned them all with the most exquisitely shaven ace of spades any of them had ever seen, and he continued through an atypically long career of shaking things up in the world of pedigree fashion.

 Woof! and Loyal Companions had all written that Dario’s careful use of the newest range of hairsprayfor dogs and tedious dying of the fur to create the effect of scales one might find on a dinosaur was his ‘piece de resistance’ and wrote enthusiastically of his up-coming entry in the national championships.

Of course, a month later as he sat in the sunlight with a steaming tea: polystyrene affair on a park bench. All the major dog literature available (he subscribed to any deemed of any merit, big or small) was clutched tightly in his white fist. “Amorally” they had written. He had behaved “amorally”. His phone buzzed like a cricket, his hand shot to his pocket, swatting.

Written by Sophie Atkin-Smith from the draw of:

fluid

world's strongest man

complete

unravel

_________________________________________________________

Melissa was best friends with the world’s strongest man, Simon. Every Friday, after work, they would leave their boring jobs behind and meet in The Halfway, a seedy old working-man’s pub. A few years ago she would have describes the air in there as blue, for the smoke. Since the alterations in the law, she now only longed for it to be blue. Without the smoke, the sweat-stench seemed damper, cloying and leaving a greasy residue on her puffer jacket. Melissa looked at Simon with weariness: it had been a long week.

“..and then he lunged at ‘im, like this…” Simon brandished a beer mat towards Melissa’s face “… and then he made to grab at ‘im, see…” his hulking arm wraps around her head, her ear folds itself uncomfortably “… but then the wee laddy sees red…” sausage-like fingers flick a long line from his eyes towards the window above Melissa’s head “…and he just picks this geezer up like he weighed nowt. Just waaaahey!” Simon throws a ball of nothing towards the yellowed ceiling above them. Some sort of fluid dripped onto the table between the pair. Melissa dips a slender finger into it and rubs it against her thumb, still watching Simon as he gesticulated wildly, recounting a fight that he’d started a few nights ago.

“I really never know why you tell me these things. Am I meant to be impressed? I’ve never even been in a fight before. You know I bloody love you but it means nothing to me.”  She smiles weakly; an unspoken apology.

“I know, doll, I’m sorry. Is something up? Long week?” concern softened his eyes to liquid, a sort of melted chocolate, but not so rich.  

“Yeah: long week. Rough, too.”  She leaned back on the booth chair and drank deeply from the murky pit of her pint glass. Simon’s face was animated as he listened to Melissa unravel the mishaps of her week. Her gaze remained fixed on him as she opened up, desperately thrusting this information on her good friend.

“What a complete and utter toad.” He seethed as she finished. “Fancy him being someone to worry about…”

“I know, the swine. The old dears I could understand, be amused even, but having someone younger, like me, go to such lengths to sabotage and steal… all over a blooming knitting magazine prize!”

“I’ll see to him if you liked Melly?” Simon’s eyes softened further, yet he balled his great first and slapped it into the outstretched palm of the other menacingly. “See if he fancies a little knuckle-sandwich to help fuel his greedy little hands on their treacherous knitting frenzy?” His unshaven top lip quirked into a smirk.