South Dunedin SuperGrans capture their dreams through poetry
Posted: Friday Aug 23, 2024
Earlier this year, on World Poetry Day, we announced that South D Poet Lorikeet Jenny Powell would be conducting a series of free poetry workshops for the staff and volunteers of SuperGrans Dunedin. We were thrilled to collaborate with SuperGrans Dunedin on this project, which wrapped up recently with a small celebration.
SuperGrans provide free holistic support to individuals and whānau, helping them learn new skills to thrive in the modern world. The six-week series of workshops was our way of saying thank you for their great mahi in the community.
Jenny led the workshops wearing her bespoke ‘chain of office’, handcrafted by Jill Bowie of Dunedin Public Libraries. Jenny opened up the creative process by asking participants to think about being granted a wish. She then guided the SuperGrans, inspiring them to ‘become’ what they secretly wished to be, and each poet wrote a poem about realising their wish. For Jenny, giving a poetic voice to seemingly impossible ideas is accompanied by joy and wonder. She sees encouraging and sharing these qualities through the energy of poems as a crucial part of her role as City of Literature South D Poet Lorikeet.
Jenny was thrilled with the beautiful poems from a group with no prior experience in writing poetry. In a sense they became their wish, transforming their aspirations into poems that captured the essence of their dreams.
These ‘wish’ poems are currently being interpreted by the incredible artists at Studio2 and Margaret Freeman Gallery, a vibrant and inclusive space where people with learning disabilities and members of the neurodiverse community can explore and expand their art practice. The poems and art will be published as part of the City of Literature’s tenth anniversary legacy book series, for participating poets and artists to take home to their whānau.
To celebrate the completion of the project and our tenth anniversary as a City of Literature, we gifted the SuperGrans a special birthday cake from Botanical Kitchen.