Thursday 3 July 2014

echo


Making Memories, Gallery Oldham


Philip writes:

Our afternoon session at Werneth Lodge on 13 February was with a group of older people with a wide range of abilities. We tried a writing technique that's often served us well when there are many voices to accomodate and a number people have difficulty writing. It's a trick that I inadvertently invented when we were working in Stockport, training a student. Two people make notes of a conversation with a participant or participants. The notes are then read back line by line, each reader alternating. This creates an echoing effect, but with lots of variants, because no two people will write exactly the same notes from a conversation. In fact when Lois and I tried it at the workshop in Werneth Lodge, our notes were remarkably different, but the following poem gives a sense of this method. 


The conversation was stimulated by Lois' own wedding memorabilia.





wedding ring



white wedding pink flowers / very long time ago

a garter, a rose / married a long time

a helluva long time / ago

a bit of a scent / the faint scent of cloves

we choose to forget / a wedding ring

a buttonhole the men wore / the bride a bouquet

a long white dress / at All Saints

he a carnation / and a party after


white wedding pink flowers / a long time ago

mother  / put rollers in

washed, curled around / a petal heart-shaped

pink /  garter with little bows

a knees-up / I remember mine well

jump over the table / white wedding, nice

weather a long time / ago

always somebody there to / take a photo

first stockings a nervous wreck


white pillars / the cake, mother-made

two tears /  little white pillars

a cake tin, locked in / for christenings

two figures on top / wearing white

no hanky panky / beforehand 

a wedding ring / a wedding band playing

1954 / had a boy in 55

married now and / so it goes round.


Group poem
13 Feb 2013
Oldham

For further information about Making Memories, please visit arthur-and-martha.blogspot.co.uk

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