Recipe for a Monster

Our first workshop produced some scary monsters and some excellent poetry.

Our first workshop was delivered in February 2024 and the attendees had an excellent time creating scribble monsters. To create these beautiful beasts we had to name them first. What better way than mashing our hands into a keyboard and adapting what comes out? Next we scribbled a random shape on a piece of paper and, using our imaginations and art supplies created some unique and unusual characters.

Allow me to introduce you to:

The Roogatiered (by Ada age 7)

The Mahug Cahug (by Nela age 5)

The Mahoogmanoomafud aka Flun (by Steve age 40)

The Flet and The Jukty (by Flynn age 4)

The Extrahonorfor (by Isla age 6)

We worked together to imagine everything we could about these creatures and, as a group, produced some amazing poems:

The Flet and the Extrahonorfor (by Flynn and Isla)

Beware! The Flet approaches!
It flies from the cave
Eyes like red, fiery, ginormous windows
Sharp teeth like pointy shards of glass.

Its bedroom is full of pictures
of big aeroplanes, new aeroplanes
really fast aeroplanes
and rainbow aeroplanes.

It eats bad people and spits out shiny diamonds.
It eats jet aeroplanes and delightful radios.

Next, beware again! The Extrahonorfor approaches!
Its eyes are fresh oranges
Its mouth a stark black hole
with four glowing teeth, like sharp knives.

It kicks through the sky like
a bird with no wings.

It eats lazy kidnappers,
drinks seawater from
an orange box.

It goes to visit its brother
The Flet.
They help the city but
the people run.

The Roogatiered and the Mahug Cahug (by Ada and Nela)

Beware! Stay back, for the Roogatiered approaches!
It flops from the recycled cardboard boxes!
Its eyes like colourful rugby balls.
Its nostrils black as space, round as plates.

Its mouth dripping with blood,
fangs like witches’ hats.
It eats hairy people’s flesh, creative cereal
cheesy glue and witches blood.

Its call is an ear piercing
creak of a door!

But also… Beware! Run to your house!
The Mahug Cahug approaches!
Its eyes look like ten pound notes,
its mouth is shiny like a big mirror.

It eats grey dolphins wearing pants,
slimy Rubik’s cubes and googly eyeballs.

The Roogatiered doesn’t go to school,
it goes to a plant pot to learn to climb.
The Mahug Cahug doesn’t go to school,
it sneaks into people’s houses and steals children’s teeth.

The monsters don’t speak English.
Instead they talk by winking
with their many eyes.
They speak the unspoken.

Maybe if we tried to understand
them, we would know
that they are saying,
”can you play with me?”