Dominic and I trialled the first section of the Hermes show at Stanley Grove Junior school. It was great fun - and I remembered all the words. The children had lots of interesting questions which was great - one of the things poetry should do is make people think.
One of the things I did many years ago when I had a role as science co-ordinator for Creative Partnerships is take a load of scientist, artist and educators out to dinner to talk (at the Wapping Project, now I think closed - which housed the hydraulics lift the curtains of London's theatreland) I seem to remember we argued a lot about metaphor but one of the things we agreed on was the importance of questions. We came up with a little aphorism - the reward for asking questions, is not answers, it is more questions. Or something like that. As a science educator I believe that if you can keep children's ability to ask questions alive, they will learn beyond your expectations. #
The questions also gave me a direction to go with the writing. It's also given me a lot to think about around the Hermes character and the theatrics of the piece - which is a completely new area for me.
So I've been doing some writing around the history of the solar system (the problem with these things is as you keep answering questions arising from questions, you find yourself going further and further back. I don't want to start at the Big Bang - I'll leave that to Stephen Hawking!) and today I've been to the museum for a tete a tete with my favourite meteorite, a big shiny, angular piece of iron that fell on Campo de Ciel in Argentina about 5000 years ago. I've developed a bit of an obsession with this meteorite, mostly because it's one of the things you can touch. It's older and from further away than anything I will ever touch and that fills me with wonder. All I have to do now is catch some of that wonder in a poem.....
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