Highcliffe is alive with the sound of poetry

An award-winning and published writer, Ash’s poetic performances have been widely praised at the Edinburgh and Cheltenham festivals. He now regularly visits schools across the country, inspiring a love of poetry and helping children transform their fantastic ideas into works of literary art.

In the morning, Ash led an assembly where he performed a collection of funny and exciting poems from his works, including The Lonely Man and Fortnite Poem. This provided pupils with a brilliant opportunity to see Ash in action and to spark their own creative ideas.

Ash then ran workshops for pupils in Years 4, 5 and 6, where he introduced some common poetic forms, including the Tricube. This form consists of nine lines of three syllables, structured into three stanzas of three lines each.

Using this format, our children wrote about a wide variety of themes, including friendship, summer, space, bad advice from cats, and dogs dreaming of bones.

The children also had a go at writing their own ‘Six Wheeler’ poems, which consist of six lines with no syllable constraints, but each line begins with a specific word provided to them.

Pupils thoroughly enjoyed igniting their imaginations and turning their vivid ideas into original poems.

The visit was hugely successful and went a long way towards inspiring pupils to engage with poetry.