We recently celebrated Poem in Your Pocket Day with two events that brought the school community together to discover, read and share their favourite poems.
Poem in Your Pocket Day is an annual celebration, which this year took place on the 24th April. We celebrated by organising a treasure hunt for poems around school. Miss Ling and other members of staff suggested some of their favourite poems including ‘Granny’ by A.F.Harrold, ‘The Adventures of Isobel’ by Ogden Nash, ‘Music’ by Laura Jackson, and ‘Valentine’ by Carol Anne Duffy, amongst many others.
The poems were printed onto colourful paper, folded into origami envelopes and hidden in various areas around school for pupils to find. A couple of the poems also had hidden prizes attached that a pupil could claim if they found it. Paris, who found multiple poems on the day and won a bar of chocolate commented:
“I really liked spending time with my friends while looking for the poems and I really wanted to find a prize. I ended up sharing my chocolate with my friends as I thought it would be a bit greedy to eat it all on my own! I still have the poem in my blazer pocket and it has become one of my favourites.”
The next week, on the 3rd May, we followed this up with a Poetry Open Mic event in the Learning Hub. Students came along and performed their choice of poem, many of which had been written by themselves, while other students and staff came along to watch.
Maddie in Year 7 took the prize for Best Performance for the brilliant way she incorporated action into her piece. Maddie wrote an original poem for her entry entitled ‘Russian Cheese.’ She told us that she often writes her own poems and that she likes writing poetry because it’s a less direct way of writing; she particularly enjoys using metaphors and rhyming couplets for effect.
Jimmy, Holly and Freya also won prizes as runners up. Jimmy treated us to a brilliant recital of ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae – which he performed from memory, while Holly and Freya wrote and performed a poem together, entitled ‘Best Friends.’
