Never a written a poem before?

Hairy hares and hairdryers may not be obvious subjects for a poetry lesson but Barnsley Football Club’s poet-in-residence Ian McMillan took to the stage at the Hay Festival to show how to shape a poem from the most unlikely beginnings.

Starting the audience off with the first line ‘midnight in the festival field…..’ he asked them to suggest what might be in the field. "Hare" was shouted from the audience, and so the poem began.

What followed was a lesson in the “joyous activity” of making poetry. Line by line, it was the audience which suggested what came next. Most of the suggestions rhymed, but as Ian explained it didn't have to as long as the prose had a rhythym.

After the 'masterpiece' was completed, each of the 300-strong audience was given a sheet of paper and a pen and asked to write a sentence at the top of the page, fold it over and hand it to the person to their left, where they would write the next line. This was done five times.

By the end of the session the paper was collected from the audience and Ian read a selection out. Some were oddly poetic, others slightly dystopian, many just plain weird. But as Ian explained, despite not knowing the previous lines, lots of additions had a flow which although unrelated framed the new sentence into a context.

Some of our favourites from the huge pile of pieces of paper we looked through can be found on the right-hand side of the page.