A group of budding poets from Loreto, under the guidance of Ms Goodwin and Yvonne McCalla, a mentor from spoken word collective Young Identity, took part in a poetry event at the Palace Hotel in Manchester. Students Ewa Hercyk, Rebecca Oluwadunbarin, Hannah Beech and Jade Calder, were thrilled to have the opportunity to perform alongside other young poets from Manchester and Leeds.

Ewa writes:

The Sunday morning of 11 November was blessed with beautiful lines of poetry coming straight from the mouths of our own students. Teamed with our Young Identity mentor Yvonne McCalla, we were given the opportunity to perform our own spoken-word poetry in front of a group of passionate, young poets at the Palace Hotel in Manchester. Armed with the power to click our fingers in appreciation, extend our arms in support of others and to give a hearty applause at the end of each performance, we were truly immersed within this world of poetry.

As topics varied from politics, homelessness, freedom and technology, the ‘protest poetry’ performances were far from monotonous, with each performance at the Louder than Wordsmith event managing to fascinate us in one way or another. It was really moving to see poets as young as 11 expressing their views on our society today. And it’s fair to say that our perspective on poetry has changed hugely.

I think what we have gained mostly from this experience with the Wordsmith poetry is the realization that poetry isn’t merely a collection of words coming from the likes of Shakespeare and other traditional poets, but it is something accessible to all of us. It is something that we can use to change society today. To protest.

All of our poetry, along with the work of the other young poets, can be found on the wordsmith website.