To inspire our poems, we learned about some of the history of Temple Church, from its origins as the administrative centre for the Knights Templar in the 12th century, to its bombing in the Second World War.
Temple Church Poetry
We used poetry to link up students from St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School with their local English Heritage site – Temple Church in Bristol.
One of the most notable features of the church is it’s leaning tower, which leans 5 feet out of the vertical – think the leaning tower of Pisa, but a bit less lean-y… After the church was bombed in WWII, soldiers thought the lean was due to the damage from the bombing and ordered it to be knocked down. Luckily, a passer-by noticed and quickly explained to the soldiers that the tower had always been leaning, and the tower was saved!
Bristol City Poet, Caleb Parkin, led us in exploring these stories through poetry. He created workshops which gave us an opportunity to learn about different types of poetry, read example poems and explore techniques we could use. For example, this poem is a ‘concrete poem’ – a poem written in a particular shape. Here, one of the students, chose to write their poem in the shape of the leaning tower.
When writing our poetry, we considered different perspectives of the site. Some of us imagined what it might have been like to be a medieval knight at Temple Church. Others thought about the church itself, and it’s perspective throughout history. And some of us thought about the nature and plants that you can find at Temple Church and the nearby gardens.
Once we’d completed our poems, Caleb then read through them and chose some of our words to be combined and written on to a new community potting shed in the gardens of the church.
The words on the sides of the shed say:
‘Masons blessed me with beauty, but I have seen too much’
‘Unsteady, a slow burning candle, melting into silence’
This community potting shed was built by young people as part of another Shout Out Loud project – you can read more about that here!