Seaford Head secondary school, Seaford, Sussex, March 2015
A three day workshop with year seven
The idea of these workshops was to enable
each child in year seven to write a poem. I struggled with how to do this -
time was tight, how would I achieve anything in such a short time? Added to
this was the brief to involve them all in their local environment, to get them
writing about the natural world around them when my sessions with them were
based in the classroom.
I had the idea of giving each child a
species to write from. I scoured local websites for lists of species particular
to Seaford. I found PDFs of the Sussex Biodiversity
Partnership, a Sussex Notable Birds list including birds as exotic as the
Little Egret, Goshawk and Osprey. The Grey Heron, Barn Owl, Turtle Dove and
Kingfisher claim their places, along with many sea birds like the
Kittiwake, Fulmar and Mediterranean gull and the migratory birds like the
swallow and swift, which are among 200 species recorded in the area.
I wanted other species too, that
children might pass and not notice, fungi, trees and wildflowers that determine
the landscapes they take into the future with them, that they will remember as
adults. A document justifying its status as a site of special scientific
interest (Seaford Head to Beachy Head) lists the flora making up the grassland
of Seaford Head's chalk cliffs: sheep's fescue, rock sea lavender, early spider
orchid, gorse, a rare cranefly and moth.
Creating these lists was a challenge but
the biggest was finding an image for each species in the time I had. At one
point, immersed in the Latin names, I felt lost. My mother's always used the
Latin names for the plants in her garden but I didn't have the application for
Latin at school. I have enough to get by, but neither am I a botanist or
environmentalist, not a specialist of any kind, in fact. I wanted an image
library of local species, available to view, to match up the names of the rare
and the common, the ugly and beautiful. I wanted close ups and National
Geographic-style detail for these children so they would be fascinated by the
species they were given, at random.
The pictures were to be the starting
point for the writing - each child would have a notebook with a photo on and a
name. I had to identify around 230 species. In itself that shouldn't have been hard.
There are chalk, alluvial, coastal and marine habitats. Seaford Head is a local
nature reserve. I struggled through lists, trying to select mammals and
insects, seaweed and fungi, reptiles, flowers and trees. I have a list of bats,
of sensitive birds and then an overwhelming list that starts with lichen and
ends with the brown hare.
How easy it is to become lost in the
common names: pygmy moss, olive earthtongue, velvet tooth, channelled
crystalwort, rusty fork-moss, starfruit, interrupted brome, stinking
hawk's-beard, coral necklace, bastard balm, pale dog-violent, wart-biter and
ghost moth, goat moth, mouse moth, dark bordered beauty, the speckled footman
and neglected rustic, the sprawler, the dusky brocade and dusky-lemon sallow.
Then the fish - smelt, herring, dover sole, undulate ray, mackerel - the
tentacled lagoon-worm and medicinal leech, dolphins, crayfish, spiders, snakes,
crickets, the dormouse and otter.
It begins to sound like preparations for
the flood but my attempts to find images were eased enormously by the records
of two local photographers and wildlife enthusiasts Bob Eade and Rev. Colin
Pritchard, who came up with named JPEGs we could print out locally. The species
I gave the children in the end ranged from the mullein moth to the otter, from
the bee orchid to the starfish, from lichen to the adonis blue butterfly.
And what incredible metaphors many
pupils came up with. I hope those images are still gathering force in the
notebooks and in their memories. Flicking through a few of the books at the end
of the project I read: the mallard is 'a dark green secret', the garden snail
'is a recycler of plant life, a tank track powering over a leafy landscape',
the mullein moth is 'a long, burnt fingernail', the robin is 'a feathered
dancer' and finally….'the silence of the crab hums the ocean.'
At the end of each day, Head of Creative Arts, Dave Faulkner and I read lines from the books to each other. The librarian was inspired to go home
and write a poem. Amber, the classroom assistant who helped out at each session
was going to write a poem for her sister's wedding.
It was rushed, it was difficult at times dealing with such a quick
turnover of children of all abilities. I would have liked more time and to
extend the project so I could have been involved more and for longer, but it worked and was inclusive, which was the key point of the brief.