Words, Knitting, Play

I’m getting psyched about this upcoming creative writing event here in Terre Haute.

I’ve been on the planning committee and I will also be facilitating one of the Saturday workshops. We hope this will become an annual event and I think it’s off to a good start, with the incoming poet laureate of Indiana doing a Friday night reading to inaugurate.

The picture I submitted for the workshop flyer was this one of me holding one of the three big letters I knitted for the for the UK Poetry Society and the Much Wenlock Poetry Festival.

It’s emblematic of my longing to combine my fiber art with word art, to remain open to possibilities. 

Ah, possibilities. Giant knitted poems created by hundreds of knitters from around the world…what playful minds dreamed that up!  And what playful hands brought it all together!

Wenlock Poetry Festival, the knitted Carol Ann Duffy poem still a work-in-progress

UK Poetry Society, completed Dylan Thomas poem

My writing workshop is dedicated to possibilities and is called WordPlay. I think of it as  ‘a playdate with words.’  I want it to be, above all, fun and playful, with the underlying message that play can be a very serious creative laboratory.

So lately I’m thinking more deeply about play and creativity and I’ve found quotations like the one below to ponder here.

Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play.... We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play...it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.-

-Johan Huizing
Dutch historian
1872–1945

 There is also this book, which I have been reading on and off for ages:

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Here's an entrance to the play laboratory I use often. Finish this question, then try to answer it:

What if I _______________________? *



So how do you play and improvise in your creative work?

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*I was inspired to do this by Jude Hill and her Spirit Cloth blog, where she regularly documents the results of her textile and stitch what if’s.


PS. Here’s another nifty little bit of play - write a poem & print it out in knitted letters here.


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