QR Code Poetry

Mr Jelley has been out along the Coleridge Way with his faithful companion 'Fable', this time between Alfoxton Park and St Audries bay, passing through sleepy dells and heathland searching out the finger posts to affix the QR code poetry. 

What is a QR Code?

Very simply it's like a bar code but it has characters aswell as numbers, and you can decode with a simple scanner (most people use a free app on their smart phone and turn their phone into a scanner.) Once scanned your phone just decodes the pattern back into the characters - ie text ready for you to read. People often miss understand QR codes, thinking that they need to be connected to the internet but this is not the case, your phone decodes on the fly, revealing the hidden text no matter where you are, they would work even on the moon!

Who's poetry?

The poems were written by local school children during special workshops commissioned by ARTlife. Every child either walked the Coleridge Way or adjacent countryside with Mr Jelley and Mrs Mash, firstly word harvesting and then later crafting their own words and phrases over just a single day. Mr Jelley then took the poetry away, laser etched it into slate and has been attaching them to finger posts along the trail over the summer and into this autumn 2014.

Sections from Wheddon Cross to Porlock have been completed as well as Sampford Brett to Monksilver, and Nether Stowey up over Watery Lane. More sections are due to be completed in the coming months to create a QR code poetry trail.

Finger post at Webber Post with QR code poem.

How are they fixed?

First nails are hammered into the timber then a high quality epoxy glue is used to attach the tile to the nails, this means that the finger post can breath and the tile remain in place for years to come. The rubber band is there to hold the tile in place whilst the glue sets and is removed after half hour or so.

How many schools have been involved?

This year there were five schools in all, and each within the curtilage of the Coleridge Way. The pupils were aged between 6 and 11 and we tapped into their literacy skills to gather site specific poetry inspired by the Coleridge Way trail itself. Understanding children's capabilities at this age is quite a skill and it was great that Jenny Mash, local teacher and artist was on board.

Mr Jelley said.

 '[the project] wouldn't have come together without Jenny Mash, her skill base in understanding Key Stage 1 and 2 literacy was absolutely crucial to obtaining the best from these little authors .'

Each school received a plaque of laser etched slate with a word cloud (pictured) depicting their pupils words. Presentation of the slates to the children connected them with the project as a whole, and they were also able to scan lots of the QR code poems before they were mounted along the Coleridge Way trail.

More sections of the Coleridge Way will have tiles installed over the coming months, so don't forget to add a scanning app to your smart phone before you depart on the trail.

Word Harvesting along the Coleridge Way

Mrs Mash with her harvested words from the children,
but written on the wooden board as the paper got so soggy in the rain.

I've been desperate to write about this day just before Easter, a day whose weather was so caustic that it felt endless, and all the stranger now sitting here with the sun shining! So just to re cap, I have worked with three First Schools in West Somerset, all are in the curtilage of the Coleridge Way. Nether Stowey at the head, Porlock at the tail, and Dunster, well a little off mid way, but the concept was simple, take a group out into the landscape and write words which reflect that experience in much the same manner as Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Watching the Exmoor foal disappear into the woods at the Jubilee Hut.

In some ways, the extreme weather, (and yes it was mad for all three separate days and schools!) was just the ticket, they needed something to write about and Cold, Icy, Fresh, Tingly, Breezy, are all in the mix.

These images here are from Porlock First St Dubricus School, who braved the weather up Webbers Post (Beneath Dunkery Beacon) This path is great, and a regular destination for St Dubricus, but as I drove over that morning I thought it was surly going to be cancelled, the rain was deep, the hills shrouded in mist, puddles right across the road. But no, the head master Mr Blazey was adamant that it would all pan out fine, and then he added that this was the walk they did when the weather was too bad at Pinkery Pond up on the Moors! When it comes down to it, the school know the limitations of their pupils far better than I do which is rightly so, and I am so pleased that we could go, as the old adage goes, 'there's no such thing as bad weather, just poor clothing.'

We tried to keep the paper dry by writing inside bags, but it was no use.

So the van dropped off the first party who thought that there was not enough water in the air so did some puddle jumping, and proper splashing. With that out of their system we were straight into word harvesting, what do you hear, feel, smell, what can you taste on the rain? And the kids were even more prolific than the clouds, for they poured forth endless phrases for us to jot down, faster than we could write.

One of the sculptures along the Coleridge Way trail at Webbers Post

Well we did have paper to write on but that soon turned to pulp, but by chance the clip boards were wooden, and not wanting to halt the kids flow, we just started to write on them, which oddly enough got better in the wet rather than worse. It reminded me about the great space race of the 60's, (before my time I know) where the Americans spent a huge budget in developing a biro style pen which would work in zero gravity, but the Russians just used a pencil! Doesn't rain in space though! 

Wet!

So the day went well, the first session harvesting out in the wilds, the afternoon writing up and working on their phrases. Jenny had a good structure for this, building in metaphor and simile into the structure of their writing, taking the ordinary and making it more, building, improving.

A great session.

So many thanks Jenny (Mrs Mash) for leading all the sessions, and thank you to all three schools for letting us loose in the wilds of Exmoor with their precious pupils. The poetry is all complete and I am just spell checking and proof reading to make sure that it's perfect before I etch the poetry into slate for re installation along the Coleridge Way. But you'll have to read other blogs for those details as I think that's plenty for one blog.