Author: thepoetryproject9

Hello artcys,

As promised I will be writing about my experience of the event of Multi-language Mushaira in Manchester. By being a part of Edlab I was given the opportunity to participate in this event. My experience was highly positive and I would recommend that everyone should experience this kind of event once in their life.

As mentioned before in a previous post and according to Manchester Metropolitan University, ‘A mushaira is a lively and interactive poetry performance event, traditionally in Urdu and other South Asian languages; at the Multi-language Mushaira, everyone will be invited to share poetry in any language of their choice, around the theme of food.’

The atmosphere of the event where we got to sit on the floor on handmade ‘picnic’ blankets, to the interactive aspect of the performances it was an unforgettable experience.

The notions of saying whoa-whoa whenever you liked something or shout ‘repeat’ when you wanted to hear something again made it really interesting and there was not even a minute of boredom. Adding to this was that the guest got to savor the dish of the poem that one of the poets wrote about. A dish I have never heard before despite living in Manchester for three years now.  A chip butty. Such a simple dish that was so new to me.
For the people wondering, a chip butty is a sandwich with potato fries inside. Delicious!

I advise anyone who has or has not experienced an event like this before to go to one whenever there is an opportunity, it is an eye-opening event that is worth participating whether it is simply by watching (and interacting with the poets) or even by reading one of your poems.

See you in the next one,
Antio!

Ps. Find attached pictures of a chip butty.

“Every two weeks a language disappears taking with it an entire cultural and intellectual heritage.” – United Union

Hello artcys,

According to the United Union around 6000 languages are endangered. For this reason, the International Mother language was created and has been around since February 2000.

Every year in February in Manchester there are many events happening to celebrate this special day. One of those events was happening at Longsight library. Through Edlab we had the opportunity to participate in the event not only by visiting the venue but by creating a workshop for the children there. Since we are doing poetry we were assigned to create a small workshop space where children would be able to come to sit and get inspired to write a poem either in English or in any other language they were comfortable with.  And our theme for the day: FOOD! The reason for that was the connection to another event happening the same evening called Manchester Mushaira that I will talk more about later.

Our workspace consisted of a long ‘dinner’ table with paper plates and many craft supplies. Children were able to come and sit at the table to create their poems, decorate them and then turn them into beautiful clouds. In order for the kids to create a poem, they had some options. One of them was using a template. Two templates were created by us students, one for younger children and one for older.
Their second option was a bag of wooden blocks where they could reach in and each of the blocks had inspirational food-related words for them to get inspired, and lastly, we had a (DIY) serving dome for the kids to imagine their favorite food inside and therefore get inspired to write. The poems were written on paper plates. After the children would finish their poem we had a tent where they could go inside to read their poem out loud and get filmed and praised, keep them to take them home or leave them to turn them into clouds that later hung upstairs to the event of the Manchester Mushaira.

This was a completely new experience for me as I have never done something similar before. It was inspiring to see such young people be able to write so beautifully. Children were producing poems non-stop without overthinking whether something is right or wrong. This made me wonder when adults say that poetry is hard and not many choose to write, is it because it is actually hard or is it because we think too much and all the magic goes away? Perhaps it’s because we try to make sense of everything or maybe because we don’t have much to talk about. Either way, it was exciting to see children be so willing to write. Especially when you give them a reason to. Children got to write their poem, decorate it, read it out loud. This gave them an opportunity to create.

This workshop that was created for the event was exceptionally successful and I hope students in this unit or similar will have similar opportunities in the future. As well as children who visit events like this, to be able to participate in workshops like this.

See you in the next one,
Antio!

Our ‘Dinner’ table

Hey artcys,

I’m doing this blog post to inform you about an event I attended. The event was called, yes you guessed it, “Poetry in the Multilingual Classroom”!
This event was a teacher CPD event that was running for 3 hours on Thursday evening. Me and two other people from my group attended. I personally found the event and the experience really rewarding and engaging. Besides being among the only younger ones that attended, it was nice to be in a room with people who have more experience than you do because you can get ideas and learn from them.
The evening started with a general lecture informing us about poetry in the classroom and the relation between poetry and languages. Later we there were option seminars which we could choose to which we want to go. I personally went to the one about the event of Mushaira, an event that happens once a year and if you follow my blog you will see that in the future I actually had the pleasure to attend this year’s event.

The event of Multi-language Mushaira celebrates poetry in relation to food and different languages. It is an interactive poetry performance event that was traditionally happening in Urdu and other South Asian languages. The event is open to poets who are interested in sharing their poetry around the theme of food, however, they can do it in any language.

During the seminar, we had the opportunity to experience some activities that happen during that day, such as paper plate poetry. Where we wrote poems on paper plates and then they were attached together to create a cloud. It was an exciting seminar that left me inspired to apply the activities I learned and similar ones in the future, in some workshop or school, wherever I had the opportunity to do so.

See you in the next one,
Antio!

ps. Find attached a  close up picture of the paper cloud we created during the seminar.

Hello artcys,

On our first Edlab conferences we started early with a lecture about the ‘Grimm & Co’s Apothecary to the Magical’. A fascinating idea with lovely people behind it that managed to engage even the last person in the room. The Apothecary is a place disguised as a shop for magical being. Apart from that, there are magical shelves that open up to reveal a workshop area. In there, artists collaborate with children to create recipes for magical potions or stories. The purpose of the workshop is to motivate young people to write and as they say “change lives one story at a time”.

The day continued with a meeting with the people who chose poetry as well. There there were discussions about where we can find poetry, what is the point of it and what does it mean to us. An enjoyable experience as we then got to present our ideas back to the lecture theater.

The second conference was another fun day that included group games in the morning. In the afternoon we got to be together with the people from the ‘clay’ group and participate in a workshop that involved both poetry and clay. At the workshop, we were introduced to a paper human body and we were encouraged to add small poems, words and whatever we felt like around it. This was a fun experience of how by using such a simple thing as paper and pencil we all got so creative even though we were a bit hesitant at first. We were also given templates to create poems as well as ready-made poems that we got to cut and add or even rearrange.

group games in the morning

A poem I made by rearranging an already made one

A poem one of the facilitators created inspired by the heart of clay that I created.

 See you in the next one,
Antio!

Hello artcys,

This is my second blog post where I will be talking about the reasons I’m choosing the poetry project. So the main reason I chose this project is simply that I love poetry. Coming from Cyprus and doing Greek literature in school we learned a lot of poetry (C.P.Cavafy, G. Seferis, Y. Ritsos and more). However, as I grew up and learned the English language, I started to also read modern English poetry (Rupi Kaur, Christopher Poindexter, and others). That made me realize how much I like and enjoy modern pieces and poetry in general as well as appreciate much more the poetry in my own language. Now I enjoy both reading and writing poetry. Another reason I chose this project is that I believe it is highly important to teach young people to love poetry in every language that it comes in because it’s a magical and easy way of expressing yourself. Every language is special and has its own special words that can’t always be translated and, in my opinion, a poem in a different language that can’t be easily translated is unique. At the bottom, I will be adding a picture of one of my favorite greek poems and the english translation.
See you in the next one,
Antio!

Hello,

My name is Christiana and welcome to my blog! This blog was created for the purpose of a school project. In this blog, I will be reflecting on my journey on the Poetry EdLab. As the famous Greek poet Constantine Cavafis said in his poem Ithakis: “When you set out on your journey to Ithaca, pray that the road is long, full of adventure, full of knowledge”. Meaning that the destination doesn’t matter as long as the journey made it worth it. Many people forget the ‘now’ and focus on the final product and sometimes that can end up being disappointing if it doesn’t turn up the way they imagined. That’s why I believe focusing on the journey is really important.

See you in the next one,
Antio!

ps. (greek) αντίο • (antío) : goodbye, adieu, farewell