Our favourite poet, Antony, has been delivering a 'Put It In Words' poetry project at St Anne's High School in Stockport since before Christmas. He's written a piece here to let us know how it's going and to share the groups' ambitious plans for the next few weeks:
"The boys are simultaneously working on a social action project and a poetry anthology.
Tying these together, they have decided that homelessness is going to be the social issue they are going to raise money and awareness for.
Each session has incorporated elements from both sides of the project, initially giving the boys the opportunity to express themselves on topics such as masculinity, school work, relationships and growing up in Stockport.
The boys are incredibly confident, open, and talented and have been a joy to work with. Their poems or 'bars' are being treated with real respect and enthusiasm as we work towards publishing a book of their work. In recent weeks we have moved towards writing about homelessness as we prepare to work with Invisible Cities.
The social action project is hopefully going to culminate on a kind of open mic night, with the boys reading their work, selling copies of the completed anthology and raising money for homelessness charities at an after school event.
At Christmas we also made sweet cones for each student in Year 10, as part of a random act of kindness drive. We are now aiming at broadening that aim and taking the kindness out into the community with help from Invisible Cities."
Sounds like the project is going brilliantly, we can't wait to read and hear some of their poetry!