Work with Schools
This page should be read in conjunction with the page titled Creative Writing, since most of that section can be used in schools. In particular, Leo, while working with older teenagers, uses much the same approach as he does with adults.
There are however, a number of exercises and games which have proved effective with children and younger teenagers.
Leo with pupils of Parkgate School
For example, after performing his Rhymoceros poetry show, he is regularly asked to give follow-up workshops. The Rhymoceros book contains a few examples of children’s work in these workshops. One Rhymoceros poem tells a story using words beginning with ‘G’, this has offered a fruitful follow-up in hundreds of workshops, where children are asked to choose a letter of the alphabet – perhaps the first letter of their name – and write a story with words beginning with that letter of their choice. Another Rhymoceros sequence is a set of riddles, where an ordinary boring activity – like washing-up, or putting on shoes- is described obliquely so it turns into surrealist entertainment. Hundreds of children have now enjoyed themselves trying to create similar riddles.
With young children, if the school wishes, Leo encourages follow-up in other art-forms like painting, music, or drama. He always remembers one notable occasion. He had been invited for a week’s festival involving a number of primary schools. The week started with Leo performing DumDum and the Stikkibak Bird, a dramatized poem based on a Grimm folk tale about a sort of holy fool who loves trees and nature, and who finally wins the princess by making her laugh. After the performance, the children were divided, and spent the remainder of the week, one day writing, another doing drama, another music, another painting, changing over so that everyone had a chance of doing everything on offer. The painting day had been allocated to an Art Adviser who had not seen Leo’s performance. He had simply given the children large sheets of paper, and told them to throw paint wherever they wanted on their sheets. When Leo arrived to see what was going on, he had the idea of asking the kids to take another sheet and again throw paint at it, but this time choose a character from DumDum, and create that character in paint splashes. The result was memorable. Wonderful.images of instantly recognisable characters: lively twirls of green, russet, and brown, which brought the leprechaun character to vivid life; fat splodges of gold and purple, which just as emphatically presented us with the overweight pompous duchess. It was one of the most triumphant workshops Leo has ever experienced, though he remarked afterwards at the difficulty for teachers if they had not seen the show; they would be unable enjoy the children’s astonishing depictions of character through the rhythm of colours, and would only see sheets of paper covered with garish and random splodges.
A poem of his, called Somewhere in the Sky, which has been published in six anthologies, recorded by a German company, and used in the Hon Kong Festival of Speech, proviodes interesting opportunities for a follow-up workshop.
Click for Poetry for Children page, and go to Somewhere in the Sky to hear the poem
Leo says the poem came to him like in a dream, and he admits he doesn’t really know what it means. It can seem a happy poem, but it can also seem quite a frightening one.
What does it seem like to you? Happy? Or frightening?
“A voice will declare …” Who is this voice? A wizard? An angel? A demon? A Head teacher?
What does the voice look like? Describe him. Draw a picture of him.
Suppose you had a dream a bit like Leo’s. Not in the sky, but perhaps right at the bottom of the ocean? Or at the top of Everest? Or in the jungle? Or at the North Pole? Or on a planet far, far, away from Earth? Or in the middle of an ants’ nest? What would the voice be like there? Tell us your dream.
——