Meldrum Academy and Community Library event.

I had a fantastic morning at the Meldrum Academy and Community Library's intergenerational reading event. The morning was organised to mark their 10th anniversary also to celebrate (a day early) National Poetry Day. 

 

The event was well attended by different groups from the local community: a pre-school group, Primary School children, young adults from the Academy, and also Meldrum's own writers' group.

 

We had a wonderful 'rhyme time' with the pre-school children singing well-known action songs like 'Wind the Bobbin up' and a version of 'Incy Wincy Spider' translated into the North-east's own Doric dialect. We then had some lovely readings from the Primary and Academy pupils with everything from Dr Seuss' 'Cat in the Hat' to Wordsworth's 'Daffodils'. We also heard a poem penned by one of the children. We then progressed to the adult writers' group who entertained us with recitations and some Doric classics such as 'Coorie Doon' and 'The Puddock'. We were also treated to a reading of a beautiful poem about our own dear Bennachie by a resident of Westbank Home, Oldmeldrum.    

 

I gave a talk and read from Jessie Kesson's 'The White Bird Passes'; shared a poem about books by Andrew Rudd; delivered a Doric ditty about going to the dentist and also some poems about Autumn.  My last reading (to tie in with National Poetry Day's 'Star' theme) was Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Escape at Bedtime'.

The morning was nicely rounded off with a 'fly cup' and, with an audience ranging from four to ninety-four (and everything in between), I can safely say that the celebration was most definitely an 'intergenerational' event.