The workshop on 11th June, attended by 15 adults and one child, was both relaxing and inspiring. After a leisurely walk in the heat, we managed to find some dappled shade to sit down for a writing exercise.
The session was a beautiful opportunity to connect with members of the community, slow down, appreciate our incredible woods right on our doorstep, and hone into our senses. I loved hearing other people's ideas and celebrating how everyone will create something unique to them. (Lily)
Some people have shared what they wrote:
Sat in the calm of the woods, the city interjects above the sound of birdsong. The low level hum of motorway traffic is white noise but the throb of a motorcycle is invasive and irritating.
It’s gone.
The birds take centre stage again.
If my father were here he would be able to tell me what each songbird was; he was knowledgeable like that. A countryman, married to my mother a Londoner. I have both in me.
Bushwood enables me to be in both worlds. To sit on a log, to look at the ferns, to be enveloped by the trees. To know that the city with it’s culture and diversity is still there, beckoning me to be busy but the greenery enables me to recentre and gain some calm. (Hilary)
A leaking water bottle and a leaking child
The yeasty taste of stale sandwiches
lifted by the smell of the idea of strawberries
Summer in these woods
A feather lies snuggled to a piece of fallen bark. Unlikely lovers.
A cathedral of green. The light dances. My heart is full.
Bliss.
Bliss.
Ignore the irritating ache of my sunglasses gripping my head.
Bliss
They really do make a terrible headband. (Lily)
And Claire wrote:
My scrawlings at the end of the workshop were mostly half sentences and too strange to share with the world.
So…I tried applying some grammar and then got carried away. In the end it mutated into a poem:
RAINBOW SHADOW
Know her,
Beyond name and notion.
She is a warm breeze skimming over you
Smelling sweet and woody.
The dappled silhouette of leaves in sunlight
dancing on your eyelids.
She is the orchestral hum of a lilac bush
honeyed web of fruit and flower.
The shimmering wings flitting over water
while smooth shapes glide below.
She is the celestial vessel ferrying us,
Ark-like across the lonely vastness.
Blue-green beauty framed by inky void
Life’s music punctuating silence.
But her verdant robes are unravelling,
Gossamer threads snapping.
Glistening scales, Iridescent wings,
and spiral shells go missing.
Waters rise, swallowing the land.
and eyes avert upwards.
To chromatic heavenly illusions
Of a promise.
A rainbow sealed a one sided deal
with Earth and all her riches.
Deluded we loot our own existence,
Forgetting we are nature
Before we became children of
Noah
Thank you so much, Meryl, for leading this lovely workshop.