In celebration of National Poetry Day (7 October) pupils at Oakham School have been getting creative with a project that mixes Art and English together.
As part of their lessons, Form 6 pupils combined textiles with the written word to create powerful and engaging pieces of art using text from newspapers, books and their own text messages.
They were encouraged to Read, Look, Explore and Collect texts and textiles by contemporary and traditional artists and writers before creating their own works of poetry.
Selected works from the day will be published in an anthology that celebrates the work of young writers at Oakham and raises funds for charities working with refugees and asylum seekers.
Helen Jones, Head of English, said: “To celebrate National Poetry Day, we explored some of the different ways in which others have woven rich texts, textiles and poems to tell their stories. We used those works as inspiration to explore and reveal the different threads of our own lives and write our own poetry.”
“The act of texting is now synonymous with mobile phones and quick messages to friends and family. Far from ‘great poetry’, it is often thought that to text (verb) is to write quickly (lol) and our texts (noun) are written in a way that is distinctly different from our formal speech or ‘proper’ writing (irl).”
“However, the roots of the word ‘text’ are compelling, and its Latin roots ‘texere’ (to weave) were used as our inspiration for the project’s artistic exploration.”
“Just as texts and stories have the power to weave a web of connections between people, places and times, we used our work to connect with others, both in the session today, and through our upcoming fundraising anthology.”
The theme for this year’s awareness day is ‘Choice’ and aims to encourages people of all ages and backgrounds to enjoy, discover and share poetry
Find out more about English at Oakham School.
