School_Matters_Issue_34

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IPS CELEBRATES NATIONAL POETRY DAY 2020

The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day was ‘Vision’ and our S7–S9 classes took to it with creativity and enthusiasm. Pupils studied a range of published poems on this theme, before writing and performing their own in class. From these, 17 shortlisted poets each won a copy of Kate Clanchy’s excellent book How to Grow Your Own Poem to inspire them to keep writing. Unable to host our normal lunchtime poetry performance this year, pupils recorded their poems on video. Based on these performances, the English Faculty awarded five Honourable Mentions (Jasmine Dent, Gabriel Diamond, Nabil Elsayed, Emily Parker and Matthew Thorburn) and declared Honor Lynn the overall winner. Congratulations to all. These six performances made it into a short film which all S7–S10 Tutor groups watched to celebrate National Poetry Day. Honor was presented with the Forward Book of Poetry and, along with all shortlisted pupils, was selected to attend a writing masterclass with poet and World Slam Poetry Champion, Harry Baker. We can’t wait to read more of our poets’ work!

Honor Lynn, S9

DARKNESS I am master of destruction Transforming bright fire to icy mist, Turning green meadows into valleys of death. I leech out joy I suck out hope, The moon is my only friend. I smother the land, quietly, softly Until the earth is a burial ground of misery And then, I turn invisible For the golden glow of sunrise has called. Tugging at your tears until they shakily spill And every time the sun waves goodbye I scream with glee as the sea becomes blood And blood becomes sea. I am puppet-master of fear Controlling, dominating your every breath, I feed on despair, Chew on your madness Drain you of the will to live And while the stars are up and the shadows are mine, The world is a haven of terror Even the most dazzling yellow buttercups fade What am I? Honor Lynn, S9 children’s books were of BAME ‘backgrounds’. Jaws dropped when Sharna revealed that she had written the sequel Mic Drop in just six days. And pupils couldn’t hide their excitement when she suggested that High Rise Mystery might be headed for TV. Sharna is looking forward to seeing the creative responses and book reviews entered into this year’s TSBA pupil competition. We hope we can invite her in person to IPS soon. I am the creator of loss and sorrow Slithering in when you least expect

GOING DUTCH WITH SHARNA JACKSON Pupils from S7–S8 were lucky enough to meet TSBA shortlisted author Sharna Jackson, with the author Zooming in from her rather splendid Dutch sailing clipper, ‘Anna Maria’, berthed in Rotterdam. They took part in a quiz to establish which of Sharna’s sleuthing siblings they were most like, found out more about her career and High Rise Mystery series, as well as getting a virtual tour of her floating home. The Q&A session was packed, demonstrating that the writer had clearly piqued the pupils’ interest. Many were surprised to hear that Sharna had not had any rejections for High Rise Mystery , her debut children’s book featuring detective duo Nik and Norva set on a high rise council estate. In actual fact, she had been asked to write the book by the new children’s publisher Knights Of in response to research which found that only 1% of characters in

Sharna Jackson, Author