As part of the English Faculty’s ongoing commitment to supporting our most able students, we were excited to take 10 Y7 students to a poetry workshop being run by the Authors Abroad organisation on Monday 12th March. During the day, students had an opportunity to meet Y7 and Y8 students from three local schools, as well as to work with the published performance poet Neal Zetter.  

Here’s what two of our students, Beau and Jack, had to say about their experience:

On our trip to Stanmore Library, the Year 7 students Harrison, Emily, Kaushal, Henna, Sophie, Benji, Nithursha, Megan, and ourselves went along to meet and work with the poet Neal Zetter. There were three other schools there and we were asked to work with these students to write our own poetry.

During the morning workshop, we first brainstormed ideas for our very own superhero, including interesting adjectives, metaphors and also facts about the character. Then, using our plan, we wrote our own poems about our fictional character. The poems had to descriptive but we chose whether to use rhyme or free verse (non-rhyme). We then had an opportunity to edit our writing to make it even better. During the afternoon session, in our mixed school groups, we were given a topic and had 15 minutes to write a poem and create a matching performance. Some of them were really entertaining, with some students miming, rapping and more!

Beau: What I enjoyed the most was making our own performance poetry and getting to show our abilities to others. We also had the chance to meet new people and grow in confidence, which will further enhance our writing and performing skills in the future.

Jack: I enjoyed writing the superhero poem the most, because I enjoyed creating the rhymes and also coming up with special powers for my superhero. It was fun and creative to plan and write a poem, and it helped to have a real poet helping us write them. I also enjoyed working with two students from a school in Pinner to write a poem, and come up with actions for it. We then performed this poem to the rest of the people there!

We would like to thank Miss Farook and Ms McCombe very much for taking us on the trip, and also Ms Ellicott and Mrs Fisher who helped drive the minibus. We also wanted to thank Neal Zetter who did this wonderful poetry workshop. It definitely inspired us to write more poetry!