Students were inspired to start reading and writing poetry on 17th November, when performance poet, Paul Cookson, visited the Academy.

Key Stage 3 students were inspired to start reading and writing poetry on 17th November, when performance poet, Paul Cookson, visited the Academy. He gave a very entertaining performance to the whole of Year 8 in the theatre, before running workshops for individual Year 7 classes across the year group. There was also a book signing event at lunchtime in the library.

Paul is the Poet-in-Residence at the National Football Museum in Preston and has performed at national literary festivals for the last twenty years. He has sold over 865,000 books and visited around 4,000 schools. He is passionate about poetry and enjoys playing with words and rhythms.

He uses music to enhance his poems and students enjoyed his electric ukulele playing! Charlotte (Year 8) said, "He was making jokes a lot and was really funny!" She explained, "The performance was very good. It was enjoyable and fun and got lots of people involved."

Krishna, (Year 8) told us that, "The poem that stuck in my mind was the 'Do as you're told!' one because it's funny and imitates real-life."

Krishna went on to explain that listening to Paul has changed his views about poetry, "Most poets write formal poems about nature- trees and all that but this wasn't like that. These poems weren't at all boring. They were really fun!"