I am well used to my work as a storyteller having an impact on young lives. Parents, teachers and event organisers often get in touch to tell me the positive effect a story session has had on their children and in recent weeks I have had some lovely feedback.
Christie, a 73 year old woman from Albuquerque, New Mexico, got in touch via my website. She is taking a lifelong learning class in poetry and their group was studying Alfred Noyes’ “The Highwayman”. She had been particularly interested in Tim the Ostler and a quick Google search later she had found me (I wrote a blog about Tim some years ago, it continues to be the page on my website which receives the most traffic).
Over the years I have done storytelling work with a number of groups based beyond the UK, visiting the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival in the United Arab Emirates, The Guernsey Literary Festival and MOD schools in Germany. Like the interview I did for BBC Radio Kent, some of these opportunities came completely out of the blue and suitably demonstrate the power of an internet search for connecting people. Some enquiries I’ve received have been no less flattering but sadly totally unfeasible. I regularly get asked to do a 30 minute assembly in schools in Cornwall or Sunderland but slightly more bizarrely a few years ago I was contacted by an outdoor museum in North Carolina and even stranger still, the Dancing Cop, Tony Lepore once invited me to join him on his TV show in Providence, Rhode Island! If only the world were smaller and flights less expensive.
Christie from Albuquerque asked if I was prepared to share the complete text of my response to Noyes’ poem which of course I was and now I have the satisfaction of knowing that this week something I wrote to help children with their school work is having an impact and being shared by a poetry group almost 5000 miles from my home.
John Kirk is a professional storyteller telling stories in schools and libraries and at events and festivals. For more information or to make an enquiry, complete a contact form.