This year’s National Poetry Day was themed ‘choice’, so we talked about the choices we’d like to make in relation to the natural world and how poetry can help us voice those.
The school was set a challenge to create tree inspired poems using a resource from my Natural Wonder Inspiration Kit, which will be shared as part of National Tree Week in November.
We shared about our favourite trees, with birch, oak and willows all being very popular with the children. We all learned the word ‘dendrography’, too – the science of tree description. Some of the first trees I remember loving as a child were on the council estate I spent a lot of my childhood on, in Cambridge. They were enormous. With pink, beautiful flowers that I was convinced (aged 8) had magical powers. Back then the estate’s playground was a little bit worse for wear, we often played in a multistory car park for fun! So the trees were a real source of welcome inspiration to us as children.
I rarely talk publicly about my background in a literary world that has little lived experience of the skyrocketing inequality that’s impacting so much of the UK’s population. But as the head of the school said as she introduced me as a writer to the school’s children, ‘you could do this too when you are older.’
With one of my favourite trees on the East Road council estate, Cambridge
Having positive role models is key to aspiration and I’m proud of where I come from. I first stepped foot in a college garden at Cambridge University, while working as a cleaner, as a teenager. I was state educated (and proud) and later went on to work in the arts as a writer, arts columnist and curator in the city, regularly attending launches with world class artists and the media and pushing for better access to the arts through my work – for everybody. This year, I was a guest judge for Jesus College Cambridge’s first poetry competition and spoke at their launch event about the need for social inclusion and literature – and for nature engagement in a time that has encouraged us to disconnect from the natural world.
