Last week, Year 12 were fortunate enough to have a fabulous workshop and talk given by poet Daljit Nagra and organised by the English Department. This was an amazing opportunity for all of us, as we are focussing our first English Literature A Level coursework task around his book of poems called ‘Look We Have Coming to Dover’.
Not only was his talk interesting as we learned about his life story and how he incorporates this into his work, but we had a fun creative writing workshop that everyone got involved with. We started off by listing slang a lot of people use, then had a go at using those slang words in our own poetry, which we drafted during the session, mimicking Nagra’s style of some of his poetry, using local dialect.
We were then lucky enough to hear him read some of his favourite poems, each read in a specific way, whether that be with a different beat or accent. Being able to ask him questions about certain aspects of his poetry was fantastic, as we can now all truly understand the deep, and meaningful messages he was trying to communicate to his readers. Overall, this experience has really enhanced our learning as a whole and has intrigued us even more about his poetry!
– Bea Ingle (Year 12)
