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04 February 2023

Posted by Alice Flynn

Superpowers, Superwriters!

The Junior Writers wrote about superpowers and being superheroes/heroines/people in session on Saturday.

We did a difficult word search looking for the qualities of superpeople, which meant we learned some new words, and helped each other along the way. We were determined in our approach - one of the super qualities in the search!

Then we worked together to come up with “everyday superpowers” such as tying our shoelaces quickly or running at speed, or being really kind.

We then wrote about a super person with such qualities and shared our stories.

To round off the session we each wrote a piece beginning “On the day I found my superpower…” We created very different pieces ranging from The Invisible Gobbler through to a craft supervillain posing as a superhero!

Well done superwriters!!

In the Young Writers’ group we reflected on moments of transformation, whether literal (changing one’s appearance) or something more internal (changing perspective) or figurative (falling in love).

We looked at figures that experience transformation in popular culture: such as a vampires or characters in fairytales such Rapunzel who experiences empowerment by changing environments & distancing herself from those who don’t wish her well. We shared cartoon characters that reflected cultural beliefs of certain time periods and how they have been updated to be politically correct.

We explored how those experiencing transformation might feel, or how others react to them.

The group then returned to their original lists of transformation and wrote about one of them, from the perspective of the one that changes. Everyone created detailed and descriptive pieces that took the listener on a journey: we had seeds afraid to leave the mother flower, trees witnessing the devastating of their tree families at the hands of men and metallic creatures… we also had sweet tales of puppies and enjoyed mindfulness and peace through our writing practice.

Our final writing practice was following the form of the poem ‘the shape changer’ poem by Thomas A. Clarke- adventuring through our imaginations as each shapechanger shapeshifted with every verse. The room was filled with all sorts of creatures and emotions, rapidly changing as the poems were spoken to each other.

One of the group said that the act of writing is itself an act of transformation and shape changing: we can experience being a plastic cup or anything else we can dream of and write as that thing! Magical and powerful indeed!

Let’s see what the next transformational writing session brings…

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