Year 5 at Poetry Together 2024!

Today, we were so lucky to go to the Poetry Together event in Central Hall Westminster. This was an opportunity for all of us to immerse ourselves in all things poetry. We came together with dozens of other schools to celebrate and develop our love of poetry.

The purpose of the event is to unite ‘young and old through the joy of poetry’. It aims to encourage us to connect with others by learning a poem off by heart and to come together to recite.

The event was hosted by Gyles Brandreth who welcomed us with open arms. He was warm and funny as he introduced a range of poets. He spoke to us about what he’s learned about the importance of poetry in terms of the benefits it can have. We learned that it can help us to develop our language skills in different sorts of ways. For adults, evidence even shows that learning poetry by heart can me us happier and can help to strengthen out relationships and ability to communicate! Gyles spoke to us about the Poetry Together competition which invites us to write a poem of no more than 14 lines all about friendship. This has been set to us for our wider curriculum homework but lots of us had already written our very own poems which we would love to see entered into the competition. Did you know that the winner has the opportunity to go on television and possibly meet Queen Camilla?!

We heard from Joe Coelho, Steven Camden, Laura Mucha, Matt Goodfellow, Coral Rumble and Claire Dyer. Each of the amazing poets read some of their very own poems to us. Some of them used the best of Shakespeare’s insults whilst others were about a day in the life in Year 8. Later, we had the opportunity to take part in different workshops. To make the most of the poets, we split off into two groups. One group went to work with Laura Mucha and focused on writing a poem about our thought machines. You can read (or perform) Laura’s poem here – we definitely recommend! We spoke about the fact that we can sometimes be quite unkind to ourselves which makes us feel worse in certain situations. To write our own version of her poem, we came together with other schools to think of three thoughts we might have if we do something really well such as ‘I’m amazing!’ or ‘I’m a boss!’ and then compared these to thoughts we might have at an embarrassing moment. Lots of us had brilliant ideas and were able to re-write a poem in less than half an hour. Laura also mentioned how during a recital we can have a narrator voice, a happy voice and a more contemplative voice. This helps the listener to understand what we’re saying. We all gave this a go as we performed our poem altogether!

The other half of our class attended a workshop with poet Joseph Coelho, where we learned about a poetry-writing technique called MORERAPS. This method serves as a framework to help students incorporate a variety of literary devices into their poems, enhancing both creativity and expression.

MORERAPS stands for:
• Metaphor
• Onomatopoeia
• Rhyme
• Emotion
• Repetition
• Alliteration
• Personification
• Simile

Each element of MORERAPS was explained, allowing us to see how these techniques can improve and support our writing skills. We really enjoyed using this framework to create our own poems, experimenting with the different techniques. It was a valuable experience that inspired us to explore the power of language.

After our delicious packed lunches, it was time to split off again to hear from other poets! One group went back into the main hall to meet Gyles Brandreth again. We had a fun-packed workshop where we discussed the fact that Gyles holds a Guinness Book of World Records record for the shortest poem… An Ode to a Goldfish. This made us laugh a lot but it taught us the poetry can be extremely freeing and that we don’t always have to try to make it rhyme or be a certain length. We went round the room completing an A-Z of animals and we thought about how these animals might make us feel. From here, we have so many options about what we could write. Lots of us went with an acrostic, as this was mentioned by Gyles, and we had the opportunity to write our own poems about a vast range of different animals. This was a really lovely opportunity for us to be creative and think of a range of different ways we could describe feelings, physical appearance or even think of a range of rhyming words.

In the second session of the day for the other half of our class, we met Steve Camden, also known as Polarbear, a leading spoken-word poet. He demonstrated his creative process of brainstorming ideas and then skillfully forming them into a cohesive poem. We were captivated by his approach, enjoying how he could take a collection of thoughts and transform them into a structured and expressive piece of poetry. His method encouraged us to see poetry as a flexible and inspiring way to share our own ideas.

After our afternoon workshops, we met back together in the Grand Hall to listen to some performances. We heard from Colin and Avi who were last year’s winners of the competition. They both read their brilliant poems about happiness. This really helped to inspire lots of us! You can watch for yourself as both Avi and Colin recite their poems on This Morning here. We also heard a lovely poem about a child’s relationship with their grandfather.

Some children from other schools performed their friendship poems and taught us how we could come together with others to develop our ideas and perform them in groups. We felt so inspired and loved our day filled with creativity and imagination. We came back to school and worked on our own friendship poems and some of us were able to perform these in front of the rest of the class. We have the opportunity to write our own poems to be submitted into the competition and we can’t wait to write, read and perform more poetry!