Students from Greenfield Community College, Shildon Campus were recently treated to a special trip to take part in a workshop with renowned poet Simon Armitage at North Durham Academy. Students were fortunate to be involved in the literary session, which involved studying poetic techniques. This included working from examples from Simon’s own poem ‘Out Of The Blue’ and then analysing meter and structure in ‘Porphyria’s Lover’. In preparation for the even,t students had been inspired to write their own sonnets before departing to North Durham Academy for the workshop.
In his talk, Simon read poems from his large library of work spanning the past 30 years, giving students insight into the inspiration and backstory to his poems. He also recited the GCSE poem ‘Remains’ about soldiers returning from the Gulf War. A student from Greenfield said “it was a great insight into the world of poetry which will dramatically help us with our GCSE English” In the second half of the workshop Simon was happy to answer any questions regarding form and structure allowing students to probe into the inspiration behind his works. All in all it was an excellent day for all concerned.
