While I am in the meadow I will be keenly listening to the sounds around me. Creating sound maps and working these into poems will be one of the activities school children will be doing when they come to visit.

There are countless ways to react to sound and it’s a perfect opportunity to make up words. Be truly explorative.

Here’s a poem by Italian writer Radio Sintesi:

A Landscape Heard

The whistle of a blackbird, envious of the crackling of a fire, ends by extinguishing the gossip of water.

10 seconds of lapping.
1 second of crackling.
8 seconds of lapping.
1 second of crackling.
5 seconds of lapping.
1 second of crackling.
19 seconds of lapping.
1 second of crackling.
25 seconds of lapping.
1 second of crackling.
35 seconds of lapping.
6 seconds of the whistle of a blackbird.

Translated from the Italian by Victoria Nes Kerby, and published in the anthology The Thunder Mutters, edited by Alice Oswald (Faber & Faber 2005).