Speak to me: young Londoners get poetic
May 17, 2010 BlogsStories of the World ‘Speak To Me’ project is well under way at Museum of London!
We are now half way through our sessions with young people at the Coborn Service for Adolescent Mental Health where we are finding out how Roman London has shaped our city today through language.
Our first session guest starred Jenny Hall, senior curator of all things Roman at Museum of London.
She was on hand to answer questions (What does this Latin text say? Isn’t it disrespectful to did up people’s graves?) and explore Roman objects from the Museum’s handling collection with the group. We looked at oil lamps, coins, figurines, dice for games and more. The young people in the group took pictures of the ones they found particularly interesting.
Everyone also got to have a go writing on replica wax tablets too -more difficult than it looks:
We have also been joined on this project by the amazing Ross Sutherland (poet and writer extraoridnaire) who has been leading sessions during which we have done everything from word association games to collaborative storytelling using newspaper headlines, contemporary obituaries and ancient Roman historical sources.
Here’s the first poem we wrote as a group: From a dappy hat to a Roman helmet
A dappy hat Is a portable radiator
A portable radiator Is a blazing cigarette
A blazing cigarette Is a tower block on fire
A tower block on fire Is a game of Jenga
A game of Jenga Is a pile of broken bones
A pile of broken bones Is a volley of arrows
A volley of arrows Is an upturned cereal bowl
An upturned cereal bowl Is a Roman helmet
To mark our halfway point in the project we decided to go for the all out Roman experience. We tested their knowledge to the max with the ‘Is it Roman?’ quiz, we brought an adult sized toga (made of strangely itchy wool) and a Centurion’s helmet (incredibly heavy) for the group to try on.
We made a tasty Roman dip (mostly feta and pine nuts, get in touch if you want the recipe, it tastes way better than it looks) using a replica Roman mortarium. We should probably have used a proper pestle too but one of us forgot to bring it…
The back of a couple of metal spoons did the trick in the end, helping us to reduce the herbs to a mush, crush the pine nuts and then add the softer ingredients.
Later on in the afternoon we spent some time focusing on rings. We have some fabulous rings in the collection, a few of which include writing. We compared what gets written on rings today with the symbols and writing used on the Roman rings, particularly admiring a ring at the Museum which has a man’s initials (3 -only male citizens or freed male slaves had the full three) engraved on it. In response, we all sat down and made ourselves rings, decorated with our new Roman initials (found a brilliant, but not real, Roman name generator on the internet).
The poems the young people have been creating throughout this project are going to feed in to an exciting exhibition at the Museum in 2012. In the meantime, some will be performed at an exciting Gladiatorial poetry slam being held here at the Museum from 6:30 on 28 September. So no more poems in this post, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.
It’s been a great first half to this project, I can’t wait to see what our next four weeks will bring.