Explore Wild Writing with Clare Crossman’s WorksheetA Wild Writing Worksheet.
For Writers everywhere!
This is for fun when you go out on walks and come home again. Or after you have enjoyed spending time in your garden or park.
For children 7-11 and their families.
First Get out a large sheet of paper (or 2) and some pens.
Here is a poem for you to read.
The Door, by Miroslav Holub Go and open the door. Maybe outside there’s a tree, or a wood, a garden, or a magic city. Go and open the door. Maybe a dog’s rummaging. Maybe you’ll see a face, or an eye, or the picture of a picture. Go and open the door. If there’s a fog it will clear. Go and open the door. Even if there’s only the darkness ticking, even if there’s only the hollow wind, even if nothing is there, go and open the door.. At least there’ll be a draught.
SECOND On your large sheet of paper, right in the middle of the page now write the word
WILD.
Then start to make a spiral like a big labyrinth, without lifting your pen.
Write another word. Mine might be GREEN but you can have any word that the word Wild makes you think of.
Do this until your paper is covered in words and spirals that are wild!
All the words you can think of!
You are now ready to go on a poem hunt! This is like being a detective, looking for what will you see and find outside on your walk or in the garden that you might like to tell us about when you come back.
When you are outside, use your eyes to look, your ears to hear, the nose to smell your hands to touch, breathe and taste the air!
If it’s ok. Bring back in reality something you have seen.
If you bring something back it might be a blossom, a weed, a branch, a grass stem, a stone, a cowslip, a leaf. Some cow parsley.
Or it might be a picture in your mind of a bumble bee, a bird, a floating feather,
Sun on water, or the grass.
Enjoy it!
When you are home again
The next bit is fun. I want you to read the following two poems. They are known as riddles. The thing you are describing is never named, you just make links to suggest what the thing is. Mum had better hide the answers while you guess. Here are two I wrote for you.
I grow in big clumps April is the month you’ll find me I ring with petals I sound of spring My shades are found on sailors uniforms Or suits that can be powdered with me. I am shy and beautiful I live in the shade of trees. Lighting up the woodland dark with sea colour. I spring out of green.
(Answer Bluebell)
I am the sun colour of a boiled egg. Upside down I could be A parasol I’m ragged and tattered like a hula hula skirt And I am as bright as summer. I grow in gardens on verges in lawns Turn into a clock and cobweb flower When my seeds are blown away
(Dandelion)
Now see if you can write a riddle for something you chose or saw outside.
Get others to guess.
If you want to write some more, here is a poem to look at this. It is a circular poem.
In the poem, the poet Ted Hughes imagines what might be inside the wolf’s fang, and answers the mountain of heather. He then goes on to imagine what might be inside the mountain of heather and makes up lots of different things. Until he can bring the poem back to the wolf’s fang.
Inside the wolf’s fang, the mountain of heather.
Inside the mountain of heather, the wolf’s fur.
Inside the wolf’s fur, the ragged forest.
Inside the ragged forest, the wolf’s foot.
Inside the wolf’s foot, the stony horizon.
Inside the stony horizon, the wolf’s tongue.
Inside the wolf’s tongue, the doe’s tears.
Inside the doe’s tears, the frozen swap.
Inside the frozen swamp, the wolf’s blood.
Inside the wolf’s blood, the snow wind.
Inside the snow wind, the wolf’s eye.
Inside the wolf’s eye, the North Star.
Inside the North Star, the wolf’s fang.
You could have a go at this, maybe in your garden or at the park there’s an interesting stone or a flower or a piece of wood. A seed head, you could put it on your table and look at it very closely and imagine all the things that might be inside it which can be anything you want. For example
Inside the stone, the sun's eye, Inside the sun's eye, the constellations of universes………..
Have a go and see what you can come up with from your own chosen thing.
One more idea and this is fun too. Write a list of 10 things you can do with something from outside. Here’s one about a leaf.
10 things to do with a leaf.
- Float it on a puddle of water.
- Check it’s not a lettuce leaf.
- Count its veins.
- Look at it very closely.
- Drop it from the window and see how far it floats.
- If it’s green tell it will be brown in autumn.
- If it’s brown tell it will be green in spring.
- Ask it what birds it knows?
- Ask ii would it like to be a leaf in a wood or in a town.
- Ask has a mouse ever sat on it.
This is really good fun and again you can be as inventive as you like.
And Finally.
Get another big piece of paper. Choose the poem you have written that you like the best.
Write it out and then draw and colour around it for as long as you want and put it in your window or in your room.
Have fun!
If you’d like to download the Worksheet as a Word Document, click this link:
Clare Crossman’s Wild Writing Worksheet
Clare Crossman April 2020