We were extremely lucky to have British poets Daljit Nagra and Hannah Lowe return to the school to speak at our GCSE English Poetry Conference on Wednesday 4th October. Year 10 NHEHS pupils were joined by over 150 students from Ealing Fields High School and Elthorne Park High School for what has become an annual event.

Mr Nagra, whose poems often relate to the experience of Indians born in the UK and include phrases that imitate immigrants who have Punjabi as their first language, started by reading some of his own creations before discussing four writing principles in more detail. He lead four activities to get students writing themselves on the subjects of things they like; using phrases, dialects or song extracts in a poem; using the senses to capture an aspect of climate crisis; and finally a subject poem on a concept learnt in maths, science or economics that could be displayed in a graph, chart or diagram. 

Essex born Ms Lowe, who only began writing poetry at the age of 29 and whose latest book ‘The Kids’ won the Costa Book of the Year, spoke about characterisation before running an activity for pupils to write a 14-line poem about someone that stood out at primary school. She also shared her editing process and showed three stages of a poem and how it moved towards completion. 

When asked what three words she would give aspiring poets, Ms Lowe answered:

1 Read – absorb as much poetry as you can and see how it works.

2 Listen – hear how poems sound when read out.

3 Tenacity – keep going and never give up, some poems can take years to finish as you return to them and re-edit lines. 

Thank you to our fantastic speakers and to all our visitors from Ealing Fields High School and Elthorne Park High School for an inspiring day!