Gillian Allnutt Poet – Her visit to the Old Courthouse Shap
This year the Writer’s group at The Old Courthouse received an Arts Council grant to help fund visits from published poets to lead workshops and provide readings. On 12th October we were visited by Gillian Allnutt.
Gillian is not only a talented poet but also a wonderfully creative tutor.
Our morning session inspired a lot of detailed writing work.
We were all given sea shells to handle. We had to ‘ask’ our shell seven questions. And after more deliberation, write down seven answers to those questions.
Then from tables around the room, we were asked to choose an image from the postcards, cuttings and prints assembled there. All the images had human figures on them.
After a few minutes study of our image, we then took one of our seven questions and answered it in the personality of our chosen figure.
Some of us came up with poems, others managed some prose.
We had about 30 minutes to accomplish this.
Each one of us had time to read and discuss our piece, with comments from Gillian, and from our fellow writers.
And in the evening some of us read the poems we had created in the morning and ‘had a conversation’ with Gillian in front of our audience talking about the process we’d used to make our work.
It was certainly an innovative way of working and everyone I spoke to seemed very positive about the outcome.
Gillian read some of her own poems for us later that evening.
All in all, a most successful and enjoyable day.