No. 2: Notes for Teachers & KS2 Pupils
Created in 2020 by Harriet Fraser and Rob Fraser of somewhere-nowhere

---

(View / Download video notes as a PDF document)

You might not be able to go far at the moment but is there a tree near you - to visit during the day, or the night? Or is there another special place where you like to go, where you can sit and write? Writing about the everyday is really important!

Five tips  

• Be still, and listen. What do you hear?

            Be still and look - what do you see, colours, shapes, movement?

Be still and feel - you can include your own feelings in your poem

            Imagine - what cannot be seen? Perhaps the night time?

                                                                  Or maybe a story from the past - or the future. 

• Poetry doesn’t always have to rhyme! 

• Try joining words together

            In this poem, I have used halfdark and wintersleep. 
             What can you can come up with?

             Have a look at your poem and see if you can put two words together. 

• After you have written a poem, read it out loud. How does it feel to read it?
  Rhythm is important in a poem. When you read a poem out loud, you can hear what works well. 

• Play with the shape of the poem

Can you change the way the poem appears on the page?
Having a poem in a neat set of lines can work well, but poetry is one place where you can break the rules and get good results.

Try changing where a line begins or move some words across the page.

See how your poem looks when its shape is different. Do you like it?

 

Some exercises to try 

Suggested Exercise 1: Poems for the seasons 

• Can you write a poem about the seasons? How about the current season? Think about what happens in spring, as trees begin to come into leaf, as the birds begin to sing more loudly than they do in winter, as the sun begins to feel warm …
• Can you write a poem about a single place as it changes through the seasons? In the film we have shared images of the Little Asby Hawthorn in winter, spring and summer. What happens to a tree as the seasons change? Or how do things change in the street where you live?

 

Suggested Exercise 2: A poem for sunset and sunrise 

• Can you write a poem about the beginning or the end of the day?
• You can begin to form a poem by answering some of these questions. What colour does the sky go when the sun sets? How early do you have to get up to see the sun rise? What sounds change as the day starts or ends? You could think about whether you hear more or less birdsong, or there might be a change in the sound of traffic. 

 

Suggested Exercise 3: A poem about the moon 

• Can you write a poem about the moon?
• You might want to write a poem all about the moon: what colour it is, how it shines, how it can disappear behind clouds. What shape is it? How can this change?
• You could try writing about how it feels to stand under the light of the moon. 

 

Suggested Exercise 4: Let a poem live beyond the page 

• You can do this on your own, or as a class.
• Write a poem and separate it into sections: these could be individual words, or individual phrases or sentences.
• Write each section on a separate piece of card, or cloth. You could create a ribbon of words or a bunting poem. Or you could attach your poem, piece by piece, to the walls in a classroom, or around your house. 

 

 Poem written at the Little Asby hawthorn 

 

                                Under the Light of the Moon 

This is the time of stillness
land milked under moon. 

 

I sit under the hawthorn
solid as a stone, 

I am writing in night’s halfdark
in the embrace of wintersleep.

Stars shine in an indigo sky
       no movement, no sound.

 

It is as if I am offered this night
       a gift
       a reminder

              

       that there can be
                   such a thing
                                as silence.

 

If you would like to find out more about the Little Asby Hawthorn visit this web page. At the bottom of the webpage there are links to blogs if you’re curious to know more! 

https://thelongview.today/the-seven-trees/little-asby-hawthorn/

 

Second poem that features in the video 

in this circle of land’s bones

moments gather into wood

 

seeds, ideas, earth, light

elements entwine

a slow graft of time

 

roots deep, years weathered

taking the long view

 

This poem has been written in three parts on treefolds, which are structures built to protect young trees as they grow. 

The first verse appears on stones in treefold:east on Little Asby Common. This is the treefold in the video. 

The second section is inscribed into stones set into treefold:centre, which is in Grizedale Forest. It is part of the open-air sculpture collection in Grizedale. 

The third verse can be found on stones that are part of treefold:north, which overlooks Ullswater and is about ten minutes’ walk from the car park at Aira Force. 

 

If you’d like to explore this in more depth with the class, you can follow this link to a web page:

https://www.somewhere-nowhere.com/projects/treefolds.


Harriet & Rob Fraser
March 2021