For some time I’ve been wanting to set up a blog dedicated to my creative writing ideas/resources to share for free. I was prompted to do so a few days ago because of the instruction that children of key workers at the time of this coronavirus outbreak would continue to attend schools and they would therefore need to be taught/entertained/occupied and so on. I’d like to think creative writing could and would be an ‘entertaining’ way to engage, and the ideas/resources could also be used for parents/carers at home tasked with the same commitment.

I’m not so sure the attendance at schools [I know it is only the first week] has been that significant or steady for teachers to be needing and/or planning for activities? This will, I’m sure, vary from area to area, rural to urban and so on.

So I am seeing my continuance with this blog more as was always the intention: collecting together and sharing creative writing resources already produced over many years both as a teacher and as someone continuing to write for teachers. I will eventually be adding new ideas/resources.

At the moment, the initial ‘thread’ of ideas is presenting work I have produced over many years for the UK’s annual National Poetry Day. I have started with these as they tend to contain ready-made and extensive detail, including teacher/guidance notes, student/writer notes, models and templates and so on. I have amended here and there and added new images/logos to update and make a little more presentable than when some of the early ones first appeared!

The title Copycatter has come quite simply from my own experience of working with students and providing them with creative writing models of/for writing to copy. These are structures/styles,  and List Poems are a touchstone-model for students to ‘copy’ as a process but also platform for generating creative, repeating ideas.

The blog is here: this will take you to Home, and the resources are in the Blog. If you scroll to the bottom of the Home page you can Follow the blog and receive emails whenever there is a new post. Please pass on details to anyone you think may be interested.

Unable to travel,
I won’t be making

the annual trip
to that city –

thirty four years
and never missed –

so moving in
a tight space

to put the empty
suitcase away

it’s knocked over to
fall and brush across

the Washburn
on its stand,

open-tuned to E,
and though not

a beginning to a blues
it is the perfect chord

playing how many
good things remain.

[Images by artist and photographer Nick Dormand]

almost encouraging results
and not going to kill anybody
so we know if things are going to not going to almost kill anybody
this is for Chloroquine, or hydroxychloroquine
and this is going to be able to don’t go as planned
and it’s shown very very around for a long time
a common drug
so we know what we know you know

[‘Apt’ recording]:

The final of my three poems over that number of days is now here. Thank you Rupert.

big white ships
with the red crosses on the side

are in tip-top shape
to deal with the chinese [sic] virus*

tremendous, not-very-nice-to-do,
really big, incredible solutions –

it’s all a lot easier to do
[self-swab and if positive

people will go and do what they have to do]

we are going to do some very exciting things
suspending foreclosures until april

when shit can hit the fan
when poor can be poor again**

and doing ships on a daily basis
to beat the invisible enemy

complete victory
total victory

potentially very exciting
[and now mike pence will provide a translation]***

[*] definitely no pun intended; [**] two secret lines; [***] adult words

[Image by artist and photographer Nick Dormand]

I have just fed the
oblivious birds in

appreciation of their
ebullient singsong

and despite their
dumb dawn chorus

waking us. With
spring on the cusp

they should be
self-surviving

but this is a treat
of thank you –

and feed still in
the bag.

I might even give
the pigeons a pass

with their still shitting on
the conservatory’s see-through

ceiling each day,
because I have one.

Maybe it’s just
old wives and

folklore or a
Hitchcock/similar film,

perhaps even
David Attenborough,

but I thought there’d be
more foreboding,

more intuitive rustling
and restlessness

like the rest of us.

Thanks to guest editor Joan Pope for publishing in Burning House Press and providing this potent image. Read the poem here. It was written to Joan’s March theme of Sex and Death in the Age of Aquarius.

Check out the others on the site with their equally potent images/collages by Joan.