Our blogs

Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

22 October 2024

Posted by Harley Truslove

Taste & Enid Blyton

Today’s theme was taste! Ali had us begin with a fill-in fun sheet which had our writers deciding the story of protagonists Johnny & Anita in a kitchen escapade. Some of our writers saw them encounter more macabre situations like cannibalism, while others simply had Anita being a supportive mother to her child’s awful cooking experiments.


Our group then had a bit of an interactive experience with taste. We had a volunteer blind taste a few items Ali brought in from home, with the writer having to explain how they smelt and tasted while not being able to see. There were some quite interesting descriptions: yellow pepper smelt like a clean kitchen; Marmite was strong bisto gravy & the concept of ‘right’; oat biscuits were piney and autumnal and tasted of ‘sad beige’ (which everyone agreed was not incorrect).


Everyone discussed the best thing that they had ever tasted, seeing as taste can be a very strong sense memory. Our writers mentioned wagyu beef donburi in Singapore, a chicken wrap in an airport, and cheese crêpes. 


To concentrate on description, Ali gave our writers a little smorgasbord of treats to taste and write about the experience of. Here is what our writers came up with:


  • Plain tortilla chip: salty, stings in a good way, the memory of camping, sandy, feeling of a noise in skull, moreish. 

  • Satsuma: The fresh rain of orange, sweet and sour, soft and sharp - an orange crescent, explosion of sour, lunch at school, velvet tang of fruit.

  • Orange chocolate: a sweet aftertaste which burrows into the teeth.

  • Lindt bonbon: an assaulting sensation which sticks around for way too long.


Ali discussed the undisputed master of food descriptions, Enid Blyton, and after reading a couple of examples from the Faraway Tree and The Famous Five, got our writers to have a crack at writing a Blytonesque feast. We were given delicious images of fairy cakes with waterfalls of pink icing, magic bao buns with delicious sauce, and a slam poem about peaches.

PreviousNext

Archive

Back to blog

What's on

Find out more

Our projects

Find out more

Our films

Watch now

Headlight Press

Find out more

Latest news

03 September 2024

Newsletter - Autumn Part One

News and Opportunities for Writers and Writing*New Course* Writing as Spiritual PracticeHow do we talk about, and write about, that which is beyond language?...

Read more

Our blogs

Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

Find out more

Resources


Why not get in touch?