Amnesty Poetry Project

During Feb – March, Mrs Cooper’s senior EAL pupils took part in the Amnesty International Project ‘Words That Burn‘. This opportunity was made available to us by Amnesty International, Glasgow Libraries, and SLIC/ SLIF funding.

Our journey started when we attended our first ever Poetry slam at the Mitchel Library. Unsure what to expect, within minutes, we were completely enthralled by poets Cat Hepburn, Jenny Lindsay and Tawona Sitole. We could see that poetry could be both powerful, entertaining, and fun. We were so interested to hear Tawona, who is originally from Zimbabwe, speak (and sing) some poetry in his mother tongue. As many of our pupils are multi-lingual, we hoped the project would help us to celebrate and showcase these language skills.

Following this, we had visits at Holyrood from : Ash Dickinson – poet, performer and slam champion. Ash not only performed for us, but encouraged us to think about how to shape our own performances, with some excellent advice, coaching and video clips. Our next visitor was Pauline from Amnesty International. Pauline explained some of the great work that Amnesty do on human rights, and set some questions to help our team progress with their own poem.

Inspired by these workshops, the group began serious work on writing and perfecting their poem. This involved several lunchtime and after school sessions, working with the amazing Mrs. Cooper, who loves poetry. This showed great commitment as all already had busy schedules preparing for exams. However, it’s often the case that the most important learning takes place through extra-curricular activities and group projects, and our Team were growing in confidence, forging strong friendships and supporting each other in this challenge.

The day of the performance came, and we arrived at the beautiful venue of the St. Frances Centre in the Gorbals, determined to do our best.

The performance was a great success. Our team of 6 were: Rafia, Arooj, Aiman, Yasmine, Hamdi, and Kiaiyan, who gave a magnificent performance, using (at least) 7 languages, in their powerful poem ‘Fly Away Home’. They were highly commended by the judges, and could rightly feel very proud of this achievement.

Mrs Cooper and the team have now set up a lockdown Poetry club, and we hope to continue enjoying poetry together. The project was at times a little scary, challenging but mostly enjoyable. We also enjoyed hearing the performances of pupils from Govan High, Hillpark Secondary and Lourdes Secondary, and we wish them well in their future poem writing.

Our thanks go to Ash and all the poets; to Pauline, and also to Ian and Fiona from Glasgow Libraries for judging the poetry slam and organising all these great events for us. Also…..huge thanks and well done to Mrs. Cooper and our incredible pupils for all their hard work, and ‘nerves of steel’ in performing for the first time!

Find out more about the Amnesty project:

Amnesty International ‘Words that Burn’