25 May 2024

Posted by Sukie

Junior & Young Writers – Week 6 (Writers’ Inspiration) – The Language of Fruit and Veg

In this week’s workshop we explored the vibrant world of fruits and vegetables!

During our check-in we described our weeks as a colour.

 Evelyn’s week had been blue due to the bright, sunny sky and having worn her blue

uniform all week

 Evan described his week as red because of another student driving him crazy

 Claire’s week was gold thanks to all the shiny, sparkly things to prepare and having

been to the beach a lot

 Sukie’s week was like a rainbow – lots of things to do, and all different colours!

 Poppy told us her week had been yellow – she’s feeling bright because it’s now half

term!

 Berry described her week as blue, as she had a good week and was delighted to find

out she had been cast as Lady Lava in her Year 6 Production!

In our reading check-in we found out what everyone had been up to bookwise:

 Evelyn: ‘Festive Fairies’, ‘Whale Watchers’ and ‘Mirabel & The Midnight Feast’ –

what a lot of books!

 Evan: ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules’ in which a child has just been found in a

ballpit

 Poppy: ‘Saffiyah’s War’ – an interesting book but she felt that the blurb gave too

much away

 Berry: ‘Our House’, which she described as compelling but not the best

 Claire: Poetry Society collections, brushing up for the summer

 Sukie: ‘Manufacturing Consent’ – learning about the media and propaganda!

This week’s theme was decided by Claire’s discovery of another new writing competition

by The Garden Museum: ‘The Language of Fruits and Vegetables’. This poetry competition

is open to anyone up to 25 years of age, and closes on Sunday 16 th June. Do check it out

and send it a submission if you’re inspired!

We read two examples of poems about fruits and vegetables – ‘Mushroom’ by Silvia Plath

and ‘Clementine’ by Ella Standage. Then we dove right into our first exercise – writing a

poem from the point of view of a fruit or vegetable. What would this fruit or vegetable say if it

could?

Evan wrote a delightful ode to a potato, while Evelyn created a fantastically spicy and

visceral piece about a chilli. Berry wrote about the miseries of the lemon, and Poppy told us

the story of Marvin The Lettuce, including the delightful line ‘nothing came with us but the

hair on our heads’.

Next we played with sights, smells and sounds, and read the poem ‘Emulsion’ by Nina

Mingya Powles for inspiration. Poppy’s dramatic tale of Marvin’s narrowly-escaped downfall

held fantastic interplay of tension and humour, with lines like ‘I’m falling on a serrated edge,

or maybe it’s falling on me. Not my hair!’ and ‘I only dropped off for 40 slugs’. Berry wrote a

vibrantly visual story called ‘No Sore Throat Cure For Poppy’, with descriptions such as ‘the

kettle bubbling, the knife glistening’.

Our next task was to write a story or recipe for a meal we had made.

Evan wrote an instructional poem on how to make apricot jam.

Evelyn wrote ‘How To Make Your Own Lemon’, including the ingredients:

 10,000 Mr Potato Heads (no offence, Mr Potato Head)

 Orange peel

 Be Annoyed

Meanwhile, Poppy wrote a script for a cooking video with Marvin the Influencer Lettuce,

including such measurements as ’17 combine harvesters of X’.

We read our final example piece, ‘Recipe For Ending Winter’ by Scarlett Timlet-Sheehan,

and had just enough time for one last exercise, in which we wrote a conversation between 2

fruits or vegetables. Evan’s ‘Lemon & Potato Visit The Air-Fryer’ was a hilarious and

suspenseful drama that rounded off the session beautifully.

Don’t forget: The Winchester Poetry Festival’s Young Poets Competition has opened! The

theme is ‘Our World, Our Planet’, and the task is to write a short poem (no more than 14

lines). This is being organised by Hampshire Cultural Trust, so it is open to anyone living or

studying in Hampshire (that means if your school is in Hampshire you can apply, even if you

live across the border). There are three age categories: 4-7, 8-11 and 11-16, and the

winners will receive a National Book Token as the prize. The closing date is Wednesday 31 st

July at midnight so we will definitely be setting some time aside during the summer term’s

Junior and Young Writers workshops to develop pieces for this competition.

Our Junior and Young Writers groups run every Saturday during termtime at the Forest

Arts Centre in New Milton. To sign up, just head to the Forest Arts website (it’s free!). Junior

Writers is for ages 7-10 and runs from 09:30-11:00, and Young Writers is for ages 11-14 and

runs from 11:30-13:00.

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Junior & Young Writers – Week 6 (Writers’ Inspiration) – The Language of Fruit and Veg