In the spring of 2025 I was invited to take a series of poetry workshops with pupils of Kenyngton Manor Primary School, Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex and create a poem that would would be displayed in the Sunbury Millennium Embroidery Gallery.
We began looking at a selection of poems chosen from a diverse range of poets, in wide range of styles; poems that employed rhythm and sound, poems I felt would appeal to the imagination. I performed some of them to the class, inviting the children to join in or recite them aloud themselves.
Using worksheets I encouraged the children to create ‘similes’, single lines comparing one thing to another: “The sun was like…” etc and then suggested they share a few lines about how they felt and why.
We generated an enormous amount of ‘raw material’, well over 500 lines in all, and I made my selection based on phrases that spoke to me, that were unusual, insightful, magical.
Once I had ensured that everyone was represented, with all pupils contributing at least one line each, I began to weave these threads together to create a poem I hoped would speak with a single voice. In a few cases lines were cut down to size but nothing else was added except the words ‘in’, ‘and’ and ‘but’. It is an embroidery poem woven from lines spun by the children and is designed to express the vibrancy and energy that they brought to this project.
Jan Noble, Spring 2025
JAN NOBLE 