The Creativity of Children

So this is the post I came to publish yesterday. Rather than post twice in one day I thought I save this for today. It was born from The Write Practice writing prompt from 22nd August - a short free write around the theme - that I liked enough to share. There's an irony to the fact that the next Write Practice blog I read was about creating a platform by sharing your stories. Consider this one plank of that platform if you like.

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The Creativity of Children

It's a simple box, corrugated cardboard, unassuming; but inside is an doorway to world I can't see. In the hands of a child that drab, brown husk is a spaceship, or a racing car, or a fort, a princess castle or a dolls house. It may be empty to me, but not to a child who sees through an imaginative eye. The empty box is a toy in a child's hand, but a dead thing in mine. My head is filled with documents and spreadsheets, with worries and responsibilities. My creativity is shouted down by practicality. A blank sheet of paper and a few pots of paint combine to form an exciting masterpiece for a child, but it stares up at me, threatening me, daring me to try, mocking that would even consider it. A child, so free: It doesn't matter if it's 'right', it doesn't matter if it's 'good', it doesn't even have to be 'acceptable' because these are adult labels for things that make us afraid when we grow up.

Growing up. That thing we think of as an improvement - growing physically, growing in knowledge and experience - but at what cost? Is it really such an improvement? Give me the empty box. Give me the blank paper. Give me the world through a child's eyes.

Student Cafe

Edit: Open University course is done - graduation is in October - and I'm very pleased with a 2.1 degree and 81% overall score on the module. Since finishing the course I've had a little break and I've been working on developing some writing projects, but now it's time to get back into the blog. I logged in to post a writing prompt and discovered this post unpublished in drafts. I actually rather liked it on second reading, so I thought it worth posting... here's the original post, including the comment. Enjoy!

I suck at poetry: I don't write it, I rarely read it and I don't really 'get it'. I can't even write Haiku with any degree of success. When it comes to poetry, there's some stuff that I appreciate (rather than 'love' or even 'like') but there's a whole bunch of popular, acclaimed and famous poetry that actually bores me. So I think it's safe to say, I am a poetic philestine.

However, the current OU course had a little section on poetry, specifcally focussing on Villanelle, Pantoum, Sestinas and Sonnets. This is a Pantoum and is a product of that section. It's not the result of a assignment or exercise... just something that sort of happened.

Normally the lines in a Pantoum are of equal length (because the 2nd and 4th lines of each stanza repeat in the next one) but this thing resisted.

So here it is... the first poem I've written since High School... a certain number of unspecified years.

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Student Cafe

Here you gather

notebook in hand, hope in your heart.

Students gathered,

To chat and to fawn and to prove you are smart.

Notebook in hand, hope in your heart;

Now resolved

to chat and to fawn and to prove you are smart:

So evolved!

Now resolved

to despondence and mournful concern that you’re not

so evolved.

“Give me love and a smile; an emotional crutch.”

To despondence and mournful concern that I’m not

worth the bother.

Give me love and a smile; an emotional crutch.

Here we gather.