A brand-new schools event celebrating poetry

We believe that poetry should be performed and spoken out loud. In this one-off event, your students will experience GCSE anthology poems - spoken and performed aloud – by cast from our Festival 2025 season and local actors.

Whether students are commencing their journey in Year 10 or on their lead up to exams, we want to deepen their engagement with the text, understanding of poetic form, language, tone, and context, supporting their curriculum goals. This performance-based approach enhances analytical and interpretive skills benefiting both the Literature and Spoken Language components of the GCSE English qualification. 

And by offering a closer insight through live performance, we aim to inspire and challenge their responses to the poems, build comprehension and cultural capital whilst enriching their personal and academic development.

This event will explore 'Power & Conflict’ with poems from exam board anthologies (including AQA, Pearson Edexcel, CCEA, Eduqas) including: 

• Storm on the Island by Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809 – 1892)
• War Photographer by Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955)
• Poppies by Jane Weir (b. 1963)
• My Last Duchess by Robert Browning  (1812 – 1889)
• The Emigree by Carol Rumens(b. 1944)
• Extract from, The Prelude by William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)
• London by William Blake (1757 – 1827)
• Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)
• Kamikaze by Beatrice Garland (b. 1938)
• Remains by Simon Armitage (b. 1963) 
• Tissue by Imtiaz Dharker (b. 1954)
• Checking Out Me History by John Agard (b.1949)

Price: £150 per school. For more information or to book, please email schools@cft.org.uk