I spent the day in Hipperholme Grammar School, a small but perfectly formed school, just outside Brighouse in West Yorkshire, working with Year 8 in the morning, and Year 7 in the afternoon. The young people I worked with were charming, engaged and endlessly creative.

In the morning I did a sensory workshop using the battered trumpet you see at the bottom right of this page (inspiration for my Poem of the Month, Petals) as the starting point for Year 8 writing. The afternoon’s workshop was based around the idea of getting inside a character’s head, and then writing a poem from the point of view of that person, and their life and experiences. The ideas and inspiration for these poems came from our examination of the clay head. Both sessions ended with a very quick performance workshop, followed by the young people reading from their work. An enjoyable and fulfilling day for me, with some extraordinary poems of breath-taking quality.