Movin' with Poetry - Poetry Workshop for Children
Thursday, 10th July 2008

No, no, no, I know I was not important as I moved
Through the colourful country, I was but a single
Item in the picture…
- Patrick Kavanagh

The Patrick Kavanagh Centre, Inniskeen are hosting a one-day poetry workshop aimed at children aged 8-14yrs. The date for this event: Thursday 10th July commencing at 10am and concluding at 3.30pm. Fee €10. Space is limited to 20 participants.

Participants in this day camp will join a group of hip young and up and coming bards for a celebration of the art of word play.  The day’s activities will seek to use poems written by Patrick Kavanagh, will allow you to take a hike along the Kavanagh Trail where you will write drafts of poems and explore a variety of worlds - Kavanagh’s world, the world of nature, the real world, and the world of fantasy.  Movin’ with Poetry is a hands-on poetry workshop focusing on word play as a means for blending eye, word, and story. Workshop will be taught from an interdisciplinary approach toward the arts combining visual art prompt, music, and performance poetry

 The facilitator for this workshop, Charlene Spearen, like Patrick Kavanagh  views the world of poetry as a paradise of the imagination where landscapes speak of sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and feelings - and where the top of a hill or the turn of a headland can speak to a personal history yet to be explored.  So what better way for children to experiment with the many rhythms associated with poetic word play than by taking a trip along the Kavanagh Trail and by exploring the stellar images locked inside Kavanagh’s beautiful crafted poems.   

**Activities will conclude with a reception of light refreshments and a public performance by the emerging bards on Friday, July 11th at  7:00pm at the Kavanagh Centre. 

About the Facilitator
Charlene Monahan Spearen received her MFA degree in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, US. She is Poet in Residence for the Columbia Museum of Art, and she has been awarded numerous other residencies throughout the state of South Carolina teaching the art of writing, reading, and performing poetry to children and adults.  She is the Programme Coordinator for the University of South Carolina's Arts Institute and the Assistant Director of the South Carolina’s Poetry Initiative.  She has studied, in depth, the work of Patrick Kavanagh, and she has presented her research on this poet at national and international conferences. Her great grandparents emigrated to the U.S.A. from Carrickatee, in Co. Monaghan.