Thanks for joining us at the third Chicken Coop!
Writing exercises, Chicken Coop updates, opportunities and more
Weee! What a night!
Thank you so much to everyone who came to The Chicken Coop Writing Group last night. It was lovely to see new and familiar faces alike.
I really enjoyed our March session, which turned out to be more spacey and dreamy than the earthiness I had envisioned. We had some egg-cellent pieces about hungry, planet-eating birds who like after-dinner mints.
If you feel like you missed out, read on to get your creativity going…
What was hatching last night…
For those who couldn’t join us yesterday, we started with a word association exercise inspired by Muted Minds.
If you’d like to try this exercise, here it is below:
Using your star sign as a starting point, write a list of associated words and phrases that come to mind. If you’re stuck, try to focus on the following aspects:
Elements: earth, air, water, fire
Symbols: ram, bull, twins, crab, lion, virgin, scale, scorpion, archer, sea-goat, water bearer, fish
Planets: Mars, Venus, Mercury, moon, sun, Pluto, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
Then use the words and phrases to write a piece. You can choose to write anything from poems to prose or create something visual like a concrete poem.
For more information on concrete poetry, check out this workshop by I Am Loud Productions and these examples by Georgia Bartlett-McNeil and Stuart Kenny.
Our second exercise was inspired by this illustration by Steve Chapman.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb75150b0-9c91-4ae6-9e3c-8c31295987ac.heic)
We used this to write pieces that included the phrase in the illustration, ‘The bird was so hungry it ate a planet and its moon as an after-dinner mint.’
You can also use the individual words from the phrase if incorporating the whole sentence feels too difficult.
Some of our attendees said this exercise gave them major kid-lit vibes, and if you’re after some surreal views of children’s pop-culture icons, look no further than local writer and poet Colin Nelson who has some truly brilliant pieces on Postman Pat and Peter Rabbit.
Be warned: these pieces can get a wee bit gruesome, but the writing and delivery are flawless.
Get feedback on your writing
A few people have asked about developing your work and having someone read your words (also, I’m dying to read your work again after some of the things you’ve shared during our sessions). Submit your work for reading.
Please remember to read the guidelines before submitting your work and if you have any questions reach out to me via my website!
Opportunities and events round-up
The final Muted Minds session is tonight, March 27, at Typewronger. The sessions are pre-booked but keep an eye on their Instagram for any last-minute availability.
For people looking to write more poetry, the Loud Poets Writing Club is on the third Wednesday of the month. Sign up for the writing club via their Patreon.
The Word of Mouth exhibition is currently open at The Scottish Storytelling Centre and features my zine, Kitchen Love, and some concrete poems I created with local illustrator Hana Khan. If you’d like to come and hear some of my work or work about food and our relationships with food, you can catch me and the other contributors performing next Friday, April 5. Get your tickets to the WoM opening here.
And last, but by no means least, Anita Govan hosts Spoken Word and Music at our home base Lost in Leith on the third Sunday of each month. Anita curates line-ups of prose writers, spoken word artists, poets, and musicians, if you need some inspiration it’s the perfect place to go and listen. Tickets will be available via Lost in Leith’s Linktree.
What’s next for the Chicken Coop?
The Chicken Coop is taking a brief hiatus in April because I’m running a writing course (ahhh). The Inkubator is a five-week writing course to help build (or refresh) your practice and hatch some new ideas.
We’ll be goal-setting, habit-building and using creative exercises to generate new ideas so you can write several pieces through April. We’ll also have opportunities for participants to perform at our first-ever writing showcase - as always, you’re not obligated to perform, but this could be a great chance to explore whether performing is a good fit fo you!
Tickets for The Inkubator writing course are still available! Sign up via Eventbrite.
We’ll be back in May for the next Chicken Coop and to get ahead of the planning, I’d love to get your feedback.
Let me know what you want to write about, how you want to grow your skills, or how we can make the events more open and inclusive! Fill out the survey here.
Thanks so much for reading!
Have a lovely April and I’ll be back with updates before May.
Sending you all happy Spring vibes,
Naomi
P.S. Watching this community grow and flourish is amazing. If you know anyone who needs some playful writing exercises or wants to join us in person at The Chicken Coop, then please share and recommend this newsletter!
This sounds awesome, Naomi! Will definitely try to get along post-hiatus 🥚 Hope the writing course is cracking 👍🏼