To mark Pride Month in June, I put my ‘writer’ hat on and spent a Friday morning with Year Eight and Year Nine in Woodbridge High School library in Woodford.
One of our Hachette authors, Laura Kay, had visited the school the same week and the young people were primed to ask thought-provoking questions. I performed poetry to both year groups, leading with the short poem Change , originally written for one of Hachette’s Changing the Story Days. The students then wrote acrostic poems under my guidance, focusing on their identities and the things that make them who they are. In both sessions, I took the students through my experience of education during a time when the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ was banned in schools, coming out to friends and family, writing and getting published.
The students’ positive responses, the caring support of the teachers when it came to helping the students write and perform their poetry, plus the small but perfectly formed library stocked with many familiar LGBTQ+ Hachette names, made it a very different atmosphere to the types of schools and school libraries some of us grew up with, while the open, inquiring minds of the students always inspire hope. The students questioned me on my opinions on book bans, AI and the future of writing, and how young people might manage their mental health in the age of smartphones.
DAY WITH COMMUNITY WOODBRIDGEHIGHSCHOOL
In the words of my poem:
It’s never too late to change.
BLACKWELL
13
14
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