In search of rainforest

Rainforest. A lesson in soundproofing. Wrapped in the myriad strands of choking motorway, catching and grappling the North West, you don’t get far into woodland when the silence falls, dropping in from branches spooled with lichens, heavy canopy casting a chill shade. The sound snarls in the moss, expert in optimising surface area to size ratio, absorbent of water, absorbent of waves, of the sonic kind.

Eerie. How far do you venture, and when you leave, do you turn your face in gladness to the summer of the garden.

Heading into the woods.

As usual

it never goes to plan. Last time, I got lost in the woods on the way to workshop.

This time, the kids had other ideas. 

If my career as a facilitator has taught me anything, it’s to make a plan, then leave it at the door on the way in. The plan is for you, and not your participants. 

Parking up at Walkers Fold, I leave my plan at the door on the way out. I hear myself repeating that this is not teacher-student, this is something we’re doing together. Perhaps I’m just finding my definition of a good teacher. As we find our way into the deaf understorey of a relic rainforest, as I am grilled in the ways of a landscape I nearly call home, I find the voices – paper and mouths – of my past teachers spilling out of me. 

The literature, I suppose, is where human as teacher comes into partnership with tree as teacher.

I make a note to thank the next tree offering me a literary worldview.

L offers to set up the pen with its ink cartridge. I instantly lose all credibility as a writer when he discovers a cartridge, already nestled in the bamboo casing. Forgot to click the clicker, didn't I.

Rowan, or mountain ash, studs the landscape as we descend into the valley. Red amongst green.

I soon discover two things about myself. One, that I am full to bursting with scraps of knowledge. Little of it is comprehensive, there are no Latin names, and nothing of biological detail. It is more the knowledge of poets: the stories, the interconnections, the silk-spun extrapolations from shreds of micro-information. 

One thing I have no answer to, is the name of the stream who chuckles and glides down a gradient only discernible as downwards to water, in conscientious observance of gravity. For a moment, we listen for the flow. I ask D how the stream might name themself. The sound strikes him motionless. Bubbling brook. And so we find a name for the stream in Walker’s Fold. 

The second thing I learn: that poetry workshops are hardly about writing poetry, and instead present an opportunity to pay attention. Spending an afternoon exclaiming over crickets, frogs and mosses, is a far greater gift to the earth and ourselves, than wrestling teen minds into poetic masterpiece. 

Nonetheless, if you want to write some poetry, we’re good at that too:

Eddee’s shape poem.

L meticulously sets his carefully chosen words to paper. D, a master in the subtle art of asking not-so-subtle questions. In his dictionary, an acrostic is something his grandma was diagnosed with. I haven’t spoken to a thirteen year-old in years. I forgot how funny they are.

L’s first photo with the polaroid camera comes out bleached white. Here be ghosts, of rainforests past. 

Three polaroids, two carrying evidence of thumb.

With thanks to the Woodland Trust team at Smithills Estate, Eddee Endley and Katie Thompson, for bringing a bit of Wild Thing into their volunteer engagement. Want to book us? Email the team at wildthingpoetry@gmail.com.