Framlingham College Prep School was delighted to welcome highly acclaimed, award-winning professional poet, Joshua Seigal, for a collection of fantastic and immersive poetry workshops.
With multiple poetry book titles published under Bloomsbury, many of Josh’s poems have been featured on CBBC, BBC Bitesize, and recited by pupils within our own Poetry by Heart Competitions.
Addressing pupils from across Years 3 – 7, Josh performed some of his favourite pieces of work from his latest book ‘Who Let The Words Out?’ and award-nominated ‘I Don’t Like Poetry’.
These included ‘Zap’ in which Josh has the power to zap away anything which makes him feel infuriated, ‘Sand’ which adds comedy to the irritation and annoyance of sand on the beach, and ‘Bluebell’, a poem dedicated to Josh’s pet cat who always seems to get into trouble.
Many of Josh’s poems explored meaningful and personal topics within the pages of humour and wit, and he encouraged pupils to think of awkward or embarrassing moments and transform them into something funny and powerful through poetry.
Ahead of Josh’s latest upcoming book which focuses on feelings, pupils were given the task to pick an emotion to write a short five-line poem about.
Alongside key poetry elements such as repetition, similes, metaphors, alliteration and onomatopoeia, Josh also encouraged pupils to use descriptive words around colour, smell and feeling to bring their poems to life.
Confusion, happiness, craziness and love were just some of the emotions chosen by pupils who performed their poems to their peers.
Talking about how he became a poet, Josh said: “I’ve always enjoyed writing and the power of words, but I often struggled to concentrate for long periods of time when it came to a book or novel. I found that I was able to write poems in a much shorter amount of time and gain a much greater sense of achievement. I also like performing, and poetry has a lot to do with delivery and performance to bring the words to life.”
Explore Josh’s full catalogue of books on his website.
