Poetry workshop

On Wednesday of this week we were delighted to welcome Ashley Smith, Head of Poetry at St John's College School, Cambridge in to school to run two poetry workshops with girls from Key Stage 3. The first workshop was held at lunchtime for our Creative Writing scholars and the second was held with Year 9 English students and English department staff, and both were extremely well received and greatly enjoyed.

Ashley has a national reputation for teaching children to write and appreciate poetry and has won numerous awards, and he helped the scholars to explore a poem which had been written about a Dutch painting. After lunch, the Year 9 girls explored ideas and poetry related to messages in bottles. Both sessions left the girls feeling inspired, curious about poetry, and keen to read and write poetry independently. We wish Ashley well for his move to Shropshire at Christmas and look forward to seeing him next time he visits Cambridge.