This morning students from Year 7 and Year 8 gathered in the LRC to join a live online event with Michael Rosen as part of the National Literacy Trust’s Refugee Week events.

Michael performed poems from his collection On The Move, and talked about ideas of home. As Michael said, we never know how or why we might become refugees, and Michael’s own family was persecuted in Poland and arrived in this country speaking only Yiddish.

He shared some very moving stories from his own family history, and provided tips and inspiration for creating poems based on our own families.

He suggested listening to the way people talk at home, and making a poem out of the phrases you often hear. You can put them together to make a pattern, like building with lego. Or you could look at family photos and write a poem about the people in them. You don’t even need to know who they are; if there are mysteries you can ask questions, and build a poem from questions.