Irish Wheel Chair Association
Irish Wheelchair Association Poetry Project
Participants: Claire Murphy, Zoe Fitzpatrick, Caitlin Kelly, Dasha Davydova, Princess Iyalla, Aoife O’ Connell, Róisín O'Regan, Jade Hampton.
I participated in a poetry project with the Irish Wheelchair society with 7 other TY students. The theme of our poetry project is THIS ABILITY. The project started on 25th September and lasted 8 weeks. Every Wednesday we would be collected from school on the wheelchair bus and taken to the Irish wheelchair association base to participate in writing poetry and presenting our ideas with clients at the Irish Wheelchair association and the Cork poet Cormac Lally When I signed up for this project, I thought it was about art not poetry. However, the wheelchair association base, we found out it was poetry which I was not as confident with but I still have an interest in. The idea of writing poetry for 10-15 strangers to read scared me but I was willing to give it a try!
Week 1: The first week we mainly focused on introducing ourselves, getting to know everyone in the group and listening to some different types of poems to see what we enjoyed most. In total there were 10 IWA members with us but some couldn't come every week. None of us had ever written poetry before in our free time so this was a new experience for both the IWA users and the TY students.
Week 2: This was our first week of writing poetry which was daunting for many of us. We were writing limericks, which are short 5-line poems. In just over an hour, everyone had written 5 finished limericks which was a great achievement when you don't usually write poetry. I found this day rewarding and realised that writing poems can be enjoyable. This made me look forward to the weeks to come with the IWA.
Week 3:This week we started writing in a different format that we were all familiar with- Nursery Rhymes! Everyone started to feel a little more comfortable sharing their poems and it turns out there were some great poets in our little group! one member of IWA in particular, Patricia, found herself really enjoying writing poems and every week they seemed to get better and more witty.
Here is an example of one of my limericks;
Little old Leo
Sat in his trio
Discussing the state of this land
He went to the pub
Gave miggle a hug
And decided to go start a band
Week 4:This week we were working on sonnets- poems that are 14 lines long with an abab rhyming form. Cormac gave us the theme 'food' then told us to work away. I found it incredibly difficult writing a poem this long at first but after a good hour's work, I was very happy with the result. This is my favourite poem I wrote from the entire project.
Week 5 and 6:This week (6th November) we were working on writing personal poems. we first wrote about some childhood memories (first memory you remember, first book etc). After this, we dove right into the writing. This process was long and hard as there was a lot of information to work from but little direction.This was definitely the hardest poem to navigate but in the end we were all happy with our finished poems, though we may not share these ones.
Week 7 and 8:For the upcoming open day at IWA where they were revealing their new IWA bus, each of us would be reading a short 4-line poem about ourselves and then we would finish off our group piece with the lines;
And now we’re here in Clonakilty
Celebrating THIS ABILITY.
This showed that though we may not all be able to walk or talk the same, we can all write poetry and share our work along with our passion for writing.Everyone was excited and slightly nervous to finally read our poems to an audience outside our little group. We also knew our weekly meetings were coming to an end.
Week 8… the open day was finally here! We all read out our 4 lines as planned along with some of us reading our own personal poems afterwards. This was followed by a speech by Lord Mayor of Cork (now TD) Christopher O'Sullivan and the mayor of Clonakilty Michael O’ Neill. Once the ribbon was cut on the New bus and the pictures were taken we all went back inside for refreshments. It was lovely hearing bits and pieces of everyone's stories over the 7-8 weeks and I knew I was going to miss these weeks spent with witty Patricia and even Good old Annie and Curious Jackie who were always so kind to us. Zoe and Caitlin also played a lovely duet of Riptide before we had to leave. We all felt disappointed when it came time to say goodbye but we knew this was an experience none of us would forget and were grateful to have spent so long with the wonderful organisation that is the Irish Wheelchair Association.
Submitted by Claire Murphy