We have walked the lanes of Toothill, we have visted the 'sites': Toothill Community Centre with its grand stained glass window, Toothill church and we have met with people that have lived in Toothill a long time at the lunch club. We have gathered stories, sent postcards from Toothill, read poems, played word games and thought a lot about how this long poem of ours might sound. It seemed that a day of writing at Lower Shaw Farm might help us bring all this together.
It was very exciting: we were the Watchers from Toothill!
Jake was tightrope walking between the trees, we watched in awe:
we watched the pigs...
Back at the centre was an exhibition of photographs from past Link Magazines and many old editions to look through for ideas and historic background.
A typewriter in honor of Olive King (lay-worker), who would visit residents in the early days of Toothill estate and type up their concerns on a typewriter in the back of her car. I was wondering if we could type up our wishes and concerns here, inspied by cut outs of road names and places in Toothill.
We googled all the street names to see what they might reveal: underneath the concrete, there's something exciting.
The session started with a discussion of poetic structure: could we write a Toothill version of the Wasteland by T.S Eliot? What would our five sub-headings be?
The Lookout
Pathways (this became 'mistaken pathways' in Michael's workshop) Where do the paths take us? Can we animate the path?
The Hut (shed) (the site of the first Toothill shop and gathering space)
The Watchers (the statue at the community centre) Symbolic of family, home, care, community, aspiration and hope.
Olive (representative of people that make a difference)
and also: Sunrise (Toothill Sunrise is the name of the stained glass window at Toothill Community centre)
We split into two groups and started to look at the headings above. We wrote some poetry inspired by by Chrissie Gittins 'Listening Station':
It hears the wind that rushes through the trees
saying something of the sea,
It hears a moth leaving the ceiling,
It hears the thin pages of a book close,
It hears a late key turn in the door.
It hears an egg flop into a mixing bowl,
It hears the crack of a bended knee,
It hears a wash leather squeak down a window pane,
It hears an apple eaten to its rotten core.
It hears a pencil dragged across tissue paper,
It hears a pea stick snapped in half'
It hears a mouth leave another mouth,
It hears a lion (or is it a child?) roar.
Chrissie Gittins
I asked the group to think about our Look Out what tiny things might it see?
'It sees the world cuddling around us
it sees the warmth of everybody standing close
it tastes the fresh air of the world
I am Toothill!' Wrote Tyler.
Michael worked with his group on Pathways:
Our Toothill today
On the top floor
Our Dog Sphinx protecting
Watchers looker’s
The future
With no face
We thought about our families and neighbours in Toothill and the sculpture of the Watchers.
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