Landmark Students Celebrate National Poetry Day
A Theme of Refuge
National Poetry Day 2023 focused on the theme of refuge. To celebrate groups of Landmark students rotated around a range of staff members, who read a range of refuge themed poetry to their groups and had discussions around the poems chosen.
Below is a slide show of images from the day and an audio file to hear a selection of the poetry read to the students by the team at Landmark, including:
Mr Turnbull-Jones reading Pencil Me In by Benjamin Zephaniah
Mr Townsend reading Alligator Pie by Dennis Lee
Mrs Jagolinzer reading Snowball Shel Silverstein
Mrs Monk reading a poem from Lemn Sissay’s Let The Light Pour In collection
Mrs Jones reading Salt Coast by Kae Tempest
Poetry Workshops
After listening to poetry all students took part in a poetry workshop around the idea of refuge. Students focused on four areas home, school, the community and the world and wrote a poem using the sentence starter of ‘My safe space is …..’ . Mrs Monk and Mrs Baron modelled the the activity. Here are some of our creations.
Safe in front of the open window
Upstairs in my bedroom,
The wind coming in and whispering in my ears,
About the beauty of the world
The stars are watching me
I lose myself in their embrace.
Safe sitting on a chair in the small language room,
Or on the floor,
Anywhere,
Warm and cosy,
My eyes and heart inside a book.
Safe in the fields, in the streets,
Empty or crowded,
With the infinite sky above,
Walking with loved ones,
Sharing our journey.
Safe in truth and in peace and hope for all human beings,
Lands and animals,
Rivers and forest,
Oceans and skies.
Lenaik Baron
My safe place is snuggled up on
My warm cosy sofa
With my long legged boy.
My safe place is
heads together,
minds racing,
problem solving and
biscuits.
Always biscuits.
Voices raise and join together.
Making beautiful harmonies
Mean
All other thoughts are
Lost.
Hope. Equality. Safety. Love.
It’s all about love.
Laura Monk
The world is our everything
Seen and unseen
Its grace envelops us
In its embrace
The world is our something
Serene and unknown
Its vastness drowns us
In cold apathy
The world is our nothing
Sometimes that’s too much
The clocks will keep ticking
While I catch a break.
Rafa (Year 11)
My safe place is my sofa,
Where I snuggle up with my cats and puppy.
My safe place is my form room
Where I can dig my eyes into a book.
My safe place is the park, dog or no dog,
Where my puppy plays
And I can play with him.
My safe place is in Sweden,
Where ice melts all year long
And the sun hardly rises.
My safe place is love, equality and freedom.
Emile Year 7
My safe place is the 0.5m2 of kitchen
On which I make
Cups of tea.
My safe place is the minibus
Regardless
Of its appalling two NCAP rating.
My safe place is on a thin road
In the middle of nowhere with
11 other cyclists, most of them
Old farts.
My safe place is
Constant movement
And
Change.
Kai Year 11
Kingfisher and Toucan create poems about their treasures
Our reception, year one and two students came into school with something that is special to them. They then had a session writing a poem about their special things. Here are their poetic creations:
These are the treasures that we love
We keep them safe.
A gloomy opalite,
A colour changing owl,
An inherited hairclip,
A pink gem,
A soft, puffy octopus
A sharp flint,
A rattling money box,
A bumpy shark’s tooth
And a glittering emerald.
These are all our treasures.
We will take good care of them.
A golden necklace with a sparkly gem,
The rarest pearl shiny and blue,
A faceless lego space builder with a cool green visor,
A cuddly, soft, principled penguin,
A tiny, fast racing car,
A shell, shiny inside and rough outside,
An orange car with a silver bumper,
Two round, smooth, hard conkers,
A speckled, soft owl with amber eyes.
These are our treasures, we will keep them safe and sound.
