Intensive Writing: View from a Window

The poems resulting from this exercise will have the sort of title you might see in an art exhibition, like Shed at the Bottom of a Garden or Mr Johnson at Number 35 Hanging Out Washing. The writer works a little like some painters do too, letting the detail appear just because it’s there, and allowing it to speak for itself, avoiding interpretative statements.

Ask the students to imagine they are standing looking out of a window they know well. It might be their own bedroom or kitchen window, a window in school or at a friend’s house.

Now put to the group six questions or prompts. In response to each prompt, the students write one or two lines, making the poem as they go along. Don’t let them write down the questions, or number down the side of the page!

Allow 30 – 60 seconds thinking and writing time after each prompt.

The Prompts 

• What do you see straight ahead of you? 
• What is on the left? 
• Something is different today – what is it? It needn’t be of great significance. 
• Write any line that follows on here, but include the word ‘sometimes’ or the word ‘always’. 
• What else can you see? A detail. In these lines, suggest the time of day or the time of year. 
• Look harder. Two more details, one of them so far in the distance you can hardly see it… or maybe can’t see it at all…

You can adapt these questions, or add to them, to make the activity suitable for the age and ability of the students. Establish different situations to vary the results.

Extension activity/homework 

Ask students to try the exercise again at home, or in situ, actually looking out of the window.

© Peter Sansom

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