Week 21

It's all coming together. There are 11 poems now and this weekend I've redrafted the meteorite poem and tried out a found pantoum based on this lovely quilt. I'm also working on the Hermes poem (again!) and hope to write one about buckles - even though the butterflies lost out to the Death's Head Hawkmoth in the end.

We've also got the trading words activity finished and the visitor's poemlet activity is almost ready for the blog.

We're looking at doing one more workshop for the museum - this will be a family workshop, encouraging people to write nonsense poems inspired by the exhibits and based on my Dinosaur Egg poem, hopefully alongside a film of me performing the poem - I'll be talking to Jason Wingard next week about the filming.

The plan is to get all the poems written by the time I see Dominic next on the 21st June.

Then what we have to figure out is how to connect all those poems together into a narrative that can form the basis of a show. Dominic's determined there will be jokes, which will be interesting. I'm not a natural comic - except by accident! I'm really hoping Dominic has some bright ideas, or at least some smart questions - because right now I'm struggling to imagine it.

But then, that's the nature of the creative process. You start with something you can't imagine. You think and you talk and you dream and you put some words on paper and you mess with them and you think and talk and dream some more and eventually something exists, not in the imagination, but in reality. It still scares me. Every single time.

The best thing I did when I planned this project is to bring together some really good people to work with. Dominic's been incredibly supportive and not afraid to push me to do better and to ask difficult questions. Cat and Debbie have been there to talk to every week and to help shape the workshops into something that works for the museum. The curators have shown me things and answered my questions. Jennie showed me the Dinosaur egg and her enthusiasm helped lead to the poem, which was really the one that got me on the right track. And soon I'll be meeting with Tania to discuss how we extend the show into a fuller educational experience.

We're half way through the 10 month project now - and it feels like we're where we should be. There are plenty of challenges ahead, but it's very exciting and I think we're going to end up with something pretty good.

Week 17

It's been a week for discovering people.

I forgot to take a picture at the museum -
so this one's from the Natural History Museum website. 

On Wednesday I was persuaded to put my antisocial tendencies ('but I'd rather watch netflix with my cat') and go out to see Denis Jones  do a gig at the Old Granada Studios. Denis was of course great, but so was the company.

My friend Sian and I got chatting to Jenny who was rehearsing with the fabulous She choir , Jenny it turned out worked at the museum and is keen on blogging and minerals. I'm hoping to be able to connect up this blog with the Museum Blog that Jenny runs and to talk to Jenny a lot about rocks and minerals.

So today I had a good meeting with Debbie (Cat it turns out is stranded in Lumb Bank. Good for her!) and we ran through the improvements we need to make to the trading activity in the money gallery.

Then I went outside to enjoy the rain in the Rutherford Garden and got chatting to a really nice woman who was with a party of school children from Finland spending the week in Manchester. They were from Tampere, the 'Manchester of Finland'. She said the cold felt like home even if the rain didn't and I told her people were getting sunburned last week. She said that their children started school two years later - and I asked her was it true that they then learned their reading more quickly and more happily and she said yes.

Then I went to find Jenny, who introduced me to a dinosaur egg. It's not that big compared to a dinosaur. They grow a lot! Turns out that reptiles don't really stop growing in the way that mammals do - which is why you get some big old crocodiles.

So, is growing a kind of migration? I'm having to think about that - but I'm writing a poem about dinosaur eggs anyway.