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(c) Catherine Wilson

"Hello, my name is Catherine Wilson and I'm an Edinburgh-based spoken word poet and writer and I'm working on a project where I need YOUR words! I'm creating a crowd-sourced, scavenger hunt digital poem.

How does that work? I'm very glad that you asked.

I'm working on a project called Homefound which aims to connect with people who are shielding or struggling to leave the house for whatever reason to show how far a word can travel, even when we can't.

If you want to join in then here's how you do it. Step 1: I want you to think about what's made you happy during lockdown. It could be as big as connecting with your family or as small but, equally important, as having a cheese toastie for lunch.

Once you've got a word or phrase in your head, you're ready to move onto Step 1.

This is where the scavenging comes in!

I want you to take a metaphorical photograph. That's just a really fancy way of me saying "a photo that represents what you're talking about... but isn't of what you're talking about."

Let me explain. If what's been keeping you happy during lockdown is something like "sunshine". You could submit a photo of sunscreen or sunglasses or something round and yellow or the big light turned on in your living room. The odder the better, though bonus points if you find something you thought you'd lost whilst hunting through your house.

If you're able to go outside you can take your photos whilst you're out and about or you can do it entirely within your own home, it's up to you.

When you've got your word and you've got your photo you're going to submit them to me, and I'm going to put them together into one big poem.

You need to email them to homefoundpoem@gmail.com

Don't forget to attach your photo and don't forget to mention your word or phrase in the body of the email.

We'd also love to hear a little bit about you, maybe your name and where in the world you're sending your word from.

So to recap:
Step 1 - think of a word or phrase that sums up what's made you happy during lockdown
Step 2 - take a metaphorical photograph of it
Step 3 - submit both to homefoundpoem@gmail.com

So what are you waiting for? We've all been saying lockdown is the perfect time to write a novel, so why not contribute to an online poem.

Thank you so much for listening to me talk about my project and get excited about poetry. And thank you too to StAnza Poetry Festival for supporting this project through their Micro Commissions. I cannot wait to create a poem with you all!"

And here's that video again.

Our workshop with Polly Atkin has proved very popular, we had 10 emails within a couple of hours of sending out the newsletter, however the good news is that we plan to arrange a further workshop this month, so more news on that soon.

Meantime, along with partners we're offering the opportunity for up to 20 people to have a new poem critiqued by the acclaimed poet Juana Adcock, whose current collection was a PBS choice in 2019. Our collaboration with St Andrews Museums has a poetry focus for July and Juana will give feedback on the first 20 poems submitted which are written in response to this month's prompt. You can get full information online at this link: www.museumevents.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/creative-challenge Please be sure to read the guidelines.

You will see that you are invited to write a poem responding to the lithograph of a polar bear by the Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Fridtjof Nansen. You can read more about him at this link: www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1922/nansen/facts

Once you've written your poem, send it to us at stanza@stanzapoetry.org by Monday 13 July at the latest. We will send the first 20 received to Juana Adcock who has agreed to read them and offer feedback.

If you'd value some suggestions on how to write a good poem by some of this year's poets at StAnza, we've asked several to share their top tips, and you can hear what John Glenday had to say here, and what Shehzar Doja had to say here.

We will share information on our second summer workshop shortly. Meantime, while we work on our gallery of festival photographs, we've shared photographs from Carolyn Forché's reading with a link to an audio recording of her reading, offering a chance to re-live some moments from that wonderful event. You can see and hear this on our recent blog post.