Exploring home – a place, person, house

On Saturday 17th June, after exploring magical worlds and dialogue for script writing, we asked our Junior and Young Writers to consider writing creatively about home.

We introduced the community to the Hampshire Young Poets Competition which this year focuses on home. There was interest among both groups about the opportunity, and our aim was to give them a springboard from which to begin writing a potential submission.

We asked our Junior Writers to consider what they find, see, and hear when they arrive home. They were encouraged to include specific details in their writing, rather than vague or broad sentences. The group really responded to this, with one writer sharing the ‘high-pitched meow of an old ginger cat’.

The community spent ten minutes exploring the senses related to home before we began sketching out the beginnings of our poems. Equipped with ‘You are’ and ‘Home is’ as prompts for starting their pieces, the Juniors embraced both the theme and task ahead.

The creative outcomes were varied and rich. Hearing how home is explored through writing was a joyous experience, from ‘home is a memory for you to keep’ to ‘clashing pans like a drumkit’ and ‘home is a toy for you to play with’. It was interesting to see how the group interpret the idea and definition of home to then write about it in creative, individual ways.

We ended the session with a big clap for creativity before welcoming the Young Writers.

To get started, we underlined our motto when it comes to free-writing: don’t think, just write. We talked about how there is no right or wrong when it comes to the practice and spent five minutes putting pen to page on the day’s theme. We then asked the group to underline their favourite parts – whether it’s the imagery it evokes or specific syntax – and each shared something. We heard that ‘he did have a home after all’ and ‘home is like a brain that remembers everything’.

In the second half of the session, we read I Come From by Robert Seatter, listening out for sections we liked. The group enjoyed the repetition of language, the rhythm of the poem, and the pleasing nature of certain words. We then looked at how Seatter’s work inspired Dean Atta’s own ‘I Come From’. We watched Atta perform his poem, before we read through it twice more.

As a group, we thought about the difference between reading a poem and watching a performance. How imagery changes and the messaging becomes layered. The community really engaged with Atta’s poem and it proved to be useful inspiration for their own writing.

The morning ended with a sharing of words. From ‘she comes from an authentic spice’ and ‘memories of misery, soaked into reality’, to ‘I come from pineapples and sour sweets’. It was great to see the variety of approaches to writing poetry about home, with fantastical takes and aspects of dark realism.

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Exploring home – a place, person, house