Y9 Enrichment Day: Report by Abigail McKee

Y9 Enrichment Day: Report by Abigail McKee

On Wednesday the 3rd of June, Year 9 of Stamford High School had an English poetry presentation workshop run for them by Darren Rawnsley, a poet, performer, and primary school teacher. The activity day overall consisted of writing a poem and enhancing it with props and percussion instruments, with further opportunities of yoga and singing workshops with two professionals in between. In the afternoon we had the option whether or not to present our poems to the year in the Ancaster Studio.

The day started off with a talk in the Ancaster from Darren, where he explained what we would be doing and led us in a mindfulness session. He told us that a good poem could be any length, even one word, as long as you performed it with enough conviction. We found his own poetry to be particularly impressive.

After the talk, we split up into groups to move between activities. My group did poetry-writing first, where we were given pictures as inspiration for our poems. You could take the topic from wherever you liked, however. This helped us develop our poetry-writing skills (needed for GCSE) and our confidence in writing as a group. Immediately after we moved on to the props section, led by Darren. He’d brought in a wide variety of props, such as hats, bells, and even a thunder drum (a sealed cylinder with a loose spring inside that when shaken makes a thundering sound). This was my favourite part of the day, as I enjoyed experimenting with all the different percussion instruments even if I didn’t end up putting them in the poem! Planning where to insert sounds in our poems will also help us analyse poem rhythm in the future.

The yoga session in the hall, led by Sarah White, was brilliant and helped us to prepare for the upcoming performances. She taught us two different breathing methods to cope with stress, alternate nostril breathing and clock breathing. We also had a session of group singing with West End singer and dancer, Jason Gray. After some interesting warm-up activities, including breath control and try-not-to-laugh competitions, he split us up and taught us the opening verse and chorus of Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’.  This helped our confidence in performing, and also helped warm up our voices and projection for the performances ahead. Although we didn’t have time for much more than that due to lunch, the slightly competitive aspect of two separate ‘choirs’ and the cheerfulness of the song helped us enjoy that hour to its fullest.

Nearly everyone from our group ended up performing their poems, and I would estimate that at least three-quarters of the year ended up putting themselves out there. Darren was very impressed with the majority of the poems and said that he couldn’t stop talking about our morning rehearsals over lunch. The first poem performed was by Mr McCormick, who wrote a poem 5 years ago about his coming baby. We were all impressed with his confident delivery. There were then too many notable performances from our year group to list here. After the poetry had ended, we all took part in one more mindfulness session and were split up again to walk around the room avoiding other people. This helped our self-awareness as part of mindfulness.

Overall, I feel the day was a huge success. The activities were enjoyable, especially the singing. The staff were approachable and felt interested in us, and the opportunity to perform your own poem is not a common one as far as I’m aware. Everyone enjoyed listening to each other and despite a few mistakes, we all enjoyed this unique experience. Thanks, Mr Zacharias!