Sheepfolds to Visit   News   Education   Images   Accessibility     Search     Links


 
SHEEPFOLDS AND POETRY

The poet Graham Mort worked at Yarlside School, Barrow in Furness and at Irthington Village School, Carlisle for a total of three days in each between May and November 2000.

At Yarlside School, Graham ran an in-service training session with teachers before the project began, to set the scene for his workshops and to explain his working process. He then worked with a group of sixteen Year 5 children to develop their language and creative writing skills through individual responses and collaborative work. The starting point was their reactions to a walk along the Fellfoot Road at Casterton with its 16 sheepfolds, each one containing a huge boulder.

As Graham Mort has written:
'The project excited me because of the possibilities of working with stone in the landscape, and because construction had long been one of the metaphors I had deployed in writing workshops to communicate how a poem is 'built' from verbal components. The project also offered the opportunity to create work which echoed the form and structure of Andy Goldsworthy's installations, which at Casterton constitute one work: or rather they form a journey, the oldest story of all'. (1)

In order to encourage the children to think like a writer, the poet gave each child a small hard-back notebook to write down their daily thoughts and observations, even asking them to sleep with it under the pillow. These became their private records, their book of dreams. However, when the journey along the sheepfolds walk was over and work on creating poetry began back in the classroom, the notes and ideas were written out or word-processed as individual responses and they then entered the public domain. With Graham's help, these were crafted into poems focussing on improving communication and making use of similes and metaphors. All the work went through several drafts which, in turn, were used to create a collaborative piece by selecting one or two key lines from each. The notion of a refrain was added (like a 'through stone') and the selected lines were arranged and 'built' to form a final poem.

This very effective process of 'building' a poem, of drafting and redrafting, of cutting and pasting, of arranging and rearranging, was also the method of working which Graham Mort used at Irthington Village School. Here, he worked with fourteen Year 5/6 pupils who also produced drawings and paintings inspired by Andy Goldsworthy's sketches and their visit to the two folds at Mungrisdale. It was the physical and sensory reaction to this site visit and the circular nature of the folds themselves that influenced the content and form of the individual and collaborative poems in this second successful project.

Artist
Graham Mort

Contact teachers Martin Holland/Maf Gibbons - Yarlside. Tel: 01229 894610
Mrs Chris Anderson, Headteacher - Irthington. Tel: 01697 72913

Photographs: Graham Mort and pupils from Yarlside School in Casterton Fold; Selecting lines for collaborative poem, Yarlside School; final reading, Irthington Village School.

A BOULDER, DREAMING

The first sheepfold dead ahead;
blossom fills it like a pond.

Bluebells drift in wind, blossom
lies on the ground like lily-pads.

The boulder dreams it is alive and will see
more than its stone prison.

I close my eyes.

The wall flows down the hill, under
a sycamore's rustling arms.

Crows squawk in the field,
sun shines into my face.

Light competes with wind,
then slowly fades.

Nature living and dying.

Stone-bugs crawl from solid rock.
Foxgloves shiver, sharing my tears.

The biggest beetle ever crawls
into the sun; stones glimmer.

A bull stares at me, fearlessly,
a cabbage butterfly flaps past,

I close my eyes.

Stone is faced like an alien,
holly pricks my legs.

In comes the wind, blowing
leaves into the clouds.

A wall seems to climb a hill
or fall down as a waterfall.

Nature living and dying.

Nettles surround the stone,
Clouds of mud boil in puddles.

What does rock feel like,
trapped inside a wall?

Does stone dream of freedom?
To see the world and all its seas?

I close my eyes.

May blossom gushes white foam,
Walls swim away like fish.

Polished stones glimmer.
Sky reels into dizzy clouds.

Two tiny lambs bathe in sun,
a blue and purple beetle crawls away.

Nature living and dying.

The stone is trapped:
It can't get out.

I close my eyes,
and a bright light shines inside.

(A poem by pupils of Yarlside School, Barrow, working with poet, Graham Mort after a visit to Andy Goldsworthy's Sheepfolds at Casterton)

  

I CAN'T FEEL MY TOES

Big, black boulders,
Stone wall steady,
Barbed wire spiking along the wall,
Sheep lying on the hillside,
Mole holes brown and muddy.
Larches standing in the distance.
Sheep print the mud,
With delicate hooves.
My cold cheeks like ice.
A slippy sliding mud puddle,
Ripples reflections of the sky.
Crows are waiting black and patient,
People sniffling, have caught a cold,
I canêt feel my toes. (2)

THE GREAT FELLS

Gleaming red fells,
Mucky tracks slither to the road,
Crunchy granite,
A bright rainbow arching overhead
A shiny metal gate,
A rusty muck spreader that hasn't been used
Sheep grazing under lonely leaning trees,
Helpless leaves underfoot
Cut down barley used for straw
River water rushing through lush moist grass.

RED MIRE FARM

In a puddle there is oil
Foot marks of sheep
Yellow dye on their rumps.
Mountains are big with bright colours.
An old bath tub in a field,
Lichen on a wall,
Marble rocks.
A river next to barbed wire,
Some rocks to build the wall,
Some rocks for sitting on,
Rock stops the wind getting in,
Rocks big, small, thin, wide.
In this sheepfold nettles, grass, muck,
Outside the sheepfold is cold,
A stone bridge,
Dead sheep bones
And a ram angry at us
For walking in Red Mire Field.

(Individual poems from Graham Mort's workshops with Irthington School.)

Notes
(1) From an article by Graham Mort about the Sheepfolds Project: 'The Creative Writing Process: from Experience to Poetic Form', in the Times Educational Supplement, English Curriculum Special, 25.5.01
(2) This poem from Irthington Village School was chosen as the Times Educational Supplement's poem-of-the-week in April 2001.

Previous next

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

.