Creative writing scholars get inspired this term

This academic year, the creative writing scholars are working with the theme 'Inspiration'. Our scholars have been using their Writing Workshop, run by our two Year 12 'Ambassadors for Writing', Amelie A. and Emma B., to explore a variety of types of inspiration, affecting a range of senses in their writing. It has already been an exciting term, with some of our scholars winning competitions and seeing their work published, with even more opportunities coming up.

Last term, the scholars looked at music as a form of inspiration, exploring the links between music and writing, with each scholar producing a piece of writing inspired by a particular piece of music. Showing the breadth of their compositions, while Abigail H. described a storm raging and then subsiding, inspired by Vivaldi, Hana M-P.’s piece evoked the sensory experience of a market, taking Persian instrumental music as a starting point.

This term, the Writing Workshop coincided with Children's Mental Health week. Our scholars looked at how emotions can be used for inspiration, and the role of writing in exploring and understanding our emotions and mental health. This theme was suggested by Eva G. in Year 8, our 'Scholar of the Term’, who produced a short poem, Comfort, inspired by the theme 'emotions'. The scholars are now busy writing more pieces inspired by, and exploring, different emotions. 

We always encourage our scholars to enter competitions and there have been some notable successes recently. Imogen C. in Year 7 wrote a piece called The White Daffodils, which she entered for the Stepping into Stories competition on the theme of 'Bouncing Back', winning third prize in the 8-11 category. Her entry received high praise from the judges and she was awarded a £10 National Book token!

Furthermore, Emma B. in Year 12 has had poems selected for two different publications. Her poems We Are and The Beginning (attached here) were both published with Wingless Dreamer in January, while the Young Writer’s competition selected her poem My Ability to be published in March. We are also holding monthly in-house competitions at St Mary's, with the first theme being Evolution. We look forward to reading all the entries from our pupils across the school.

Finally, one of our Year 12 scholars, Freya B., has been running a Poetry Club for KS3 students, exploring a range of ideas for connected to reading and writing poetry. On Holocaust Memorial Day, she led the group in a consideration of how poetry can tell stories from voices silenced across history, and she gave the group the opening line of Listen. She plans to do a future session on spoken word poetry, looking at Benjamin Zephaniah. Freya, Amelie and Emma have also been selected to join Ms Cottingham for an interactive online conference about spoken word poetry, run by the English Media Centre next month. 

We hope you enjoyed hearing about some of the brilliant work our scholars have been doing this term. Find out more about our creative writing scholarship here.