Playspace News 1 – September 2013

Welcome to the first PlaySpace Publications (PSP) occasional newsletter. So what’s new in creative words for health & wellbeing? I’m just back from a weekend conference in Taplow, Berkshire on Transforming Conflict partly organised by the Network of Engaged Buddhist, and this weekend I will be attending the Attentive Writers in Glasgow University; then in mid September there is Living with the Reality of Uncertainity  a facilitator training with Ted Bowman; in October there’s the Lapidus conference and AGM in Bristol; and there’s the 99 words project that I’ve been introducing to my writing groups . . . .

And what next from PSP: wee dods of kismet , a posthumous collection of poems by Margaret Donaldson is currently being designed and will be available in October, mainly for family and friends as well as a fund raiser for Freedom from Torture. Margaret was a founder member of the Bank Street Writers and a generous supporter of Lapidus Scotland, both on the committee and attending most of our events.  Before the end of the year, PSP will publish Dorothy Stafford’s Lost Words as an inspiration for parents (aunts, uncles, babysitters too) to remember and record what children say.  This is what Dorothy and William Stafford did  in a  private booklet for their family in Oregon. I have permission to make this more widely in Scotland, any profit will be donated to Parent Network Scotland – Here’s one quote from Kim Stafford, age 6 who is now the director of the Northwest Writing Institute, having followed in his farther’s footsteps: “Wouldn’t it be funny if the wind would blow all the world up in the sky?”

As we enter the time of harvest, I’m reminded of a walled garden in Northern Scotland near Nairn where in the Spring I counted more that 20 kinds of potatoes planted and labelled in neat rows. They will soon be ready to lift: