Pupils were so well versed (From Swindon Advertiser)

Pupils were so well versed

10:31am Tuesday 22nd June 2010 in Literary Corner By The Commonweal School

THE SIXTH Swindon Festival of Literature Youth Poetry Slam exceeded all expectations.

This year saw more boys taking part and the standard across the board was extremely high. All students, with the help of their teachers, spent their free time fine-tuning their performance ready for the Grand Slam at the event at the Art Centre in Old Town, Swindon.

The Youth Slam was conceived by festival director Matt Holland and Josie Williams, community arts development officer at The Commonweal School.

The event is open to Ye ar 8 students from Swindon secondary schools and this year all schools signed up, including for the first time a group of home-educated children. Sadly two schools dropped out last minute due to unforeseen events, one being the Icelandic volcano which left a teacher stranded abroad.

The project is delivered via schools' English departments and children are selected either by audition, from the Gifted and Ta lented list or are spotted following the delivery of a scheme of work in performance poetry.

Before the Grand Slam the students take part in workshops with professional poets, Marcus Moore and Sara-Jane Arbury from Spiel Unlimited.

The workshop is three hours long and in that time they learn techniques on performance, write a A-Z poem using each letter of the alphabet as the start of each word in consecutive order and also write one poem which they then perform to their peers in the end of workshop performance where two teams from each school are selected to go forward to the Grand Slam at The Arts Centre.

This leaves students 10 days to write another poem, learn it and perform it.

The students must write the poem themselves, but their teachers can help with the performance. Most importantly the teams that perform at the Arts Centre are incognito and use a team name that doesn't identify who they are and which school they come from.

The winners were: Two Boys and a Half (Commonweal) with The Battle for the Library; Big Mac (Commonweal) with Carli's Afro; and Three Gems and Josh (Isambard Community School) with Three Gems.