We are delighted to welcome Oxford Poetry Library and its highly-rated nature poetry workshop to West Oxford Community Centre, as part of the ‘From the Ground Up’ exhibition celebration 20 years of community action in Oxfordshire. This workshop is based on the award-winning book ‘The Lost Words’ by Robert Macfarlane, illustrated by Jackie Morris, which aims to bring the natural world back into the lives of children through poetry.

Ideal for 7-14 year olds and their parents/guardians, this is a 3-hour family session which combines nature identification skills, vocabulary building, and imaginative description using all five senses to explore nature. After a chat about the kind of creatures, creepy-crawlies, and all manner of living things we might be seeing (and a bit of binocular training!), we will head out into Kingfisher Corner to explore. Local nature experts will lead the walk, teaching participants how to look and listen and notice the living world around us. We then return inside to create our own Lost Words-inspired poetry with the help of poet Phoebe Nicholson.