“Lovely to hear from you!

We have a whole school poetry recital in the morning for National Poetry Day — it would be lovely if you could attend and maybe read one of your poems to the children? It might be best to phone school before you come, just to make sure about timings (if you are able to make it).”

So there I was, walking past the little hand drawn signs featuring pictures of dogs filled in with crayon saying “Pick up your Dog Poo!” and through the black iron gates of the old Victorian school building. My own two children went through the same gates every day twenty years ago. Just like them I crossed into a building which, despite its age, feels filled with love, light, and colour.

I signed in and the smiling school secretary welcomed me and pointed me towards the Hall. “They’re all dressed up and waiting for you!”

My wife and I go to the school once a week to listen to the kids read, something Primary School teachers in an era of attainment tests and performance targets often have little time to do. I had also done a poetry workshop with the youngest “Acorn” class in the summer term, so I was a familiar figure, sitting alongside one of the teachers while each year group recited their own poems with the aid of costumes, props and the odd prompt. There are less than 60 children in the school, so everyone knows each other, and the atmosphere is happy and encouraging. 

It’s a great little village school.

After the children had performed and the whole school had sung a jolly rhyming poem about digging on the allotment it was my turn: “Now perhaps Mr Porter, our Resident Poet would like to read you one or two of his poems?” Clutching two poems I walked up to the front and got ready to do “Steve the Stegosaur’s Day at School”. Just as I did, my neighbour’s son, Archie walked across the hall sporting a green spiked dinosaur tail. It was meant to be.

Archie joined me on stage, and we did the poem together, with Archie supplying the actions. The original inspiration for it had come from a post on our Village WhatsApp group one especially breezy morning, when a resident woke up to discover an inflatable dinosaur in their front garden and wondered whose it was. 

The story is told from the perspective of a little boy walking to school. For him, the inflatable dinosaur became a real one, creating chaos during a day spent squeezing into tight spaces, eating everything in sight, playing football and breaking wind, deafeningly, before wandering off across the adjacent park, leaving giant footprints in the fresh snow. The twist was at the end, with the teacher finishing reading her story to the class and closing her book. Was Steve real, or was he part of a story? Or did he purely exist in the little boy’s imagination?

The kids seemed to enjoy it, so I did a second poem about a jogger having an uncomfortably close encounter with a buzzard on one of the local lanes. As this was based on something that had actually happened to me, the reading had an edge of visceral realism regarding the power of a bird of prey’s wings and the impact of talons landing on one’s head at high speed, which I hope didn’t scare the under-fives too much.

“That was great Mr Porter — are you able to come back this afternoon and do another poetry workshop with Years 3,4,5 and 6?” 

“Of course, I’d be delighted to”

I had a reasonable amount of material suitable for primary schoolchildren but thought it would be fun to write something new that they might enjoy on the day, it was National Poetry Day after all. So, 45 minutes before I was due to return, the ‘Poo Poster” gave me a start. An irresponsible dog owner regularly allowed their mutt to poo on the footpath outside school with the inevitable results, hence the poster. Maybe I could do a kind of public information poem to help spark the kids to do their own poems for the day. The refrain “Pick up your Poo” was my way in to a twelve line, three verse poem which would do the job nicely.

“Hi Mr Porter, we thought you could split the hour between Years 3 and 4 and Years 5 and 6 if that’s OK? — so if you go across to their class, we’ll see you back here at 3pm” said the beaming teacher of Years 5 and 6.

More of the Years 3 and 4 knew me than the older kids, so that was fine. In no time at all we were sitting together, and I was asking them what they thought poetry was, and why they liked it. They were a brilliant bunch and I shared two poems some of them already knew, one about a mammoth which was really a tree and one about Nzo an elephant who thought she was a buffalo (true story) before launching into “Pick up your Poo”. They joined in enthusiastically with the refrain and we were flying. Working with kids is energising. They have such great ideas and have yet to discover the restrictions of self-consciousness. By the time I was able to set them the task of writing their own poems in groups of four or five it was already 3pm, the half hour had flown by. I explained to the teacher who took the older class that I would need to come back again, as I needed to complete the workshop with years 3 and 4.

“No problem at all Mr Porter, it would be great if we could rearrange for another day, and we were going to ask if you might be able to help us with our Christmas poems, after the holiday? — they are for a competition”

“I’d be very happy to do that”

The last half hour was a flurry of listening to ideas, giving feedback, and most of all encouraging the children to have a go, and not be worried if they wrote one line, or twenty — “a poem can be about anything and take any form — just be sure to read it aloud to make sure it sounds and feels right” I said.

So we had the monkey who didn’t like bananas, the dog who disappeared in the cloud, foxes that prowled in the night time, dogs who thought they were cats, the puppy who liked to cuddle, the spider shaped tree and the dove who accompanied the little girl everywhere. Long poems, short poems, funny poems, thoughtful poems, some with illustrations and all produced within twenty minutes or so. A cascade of words, ideas and joy.

I closed with a poem I wrote for my sister, a primary teacher who loved poetry and was brilliant at storytelling. It reminded the children that teachers were people who could take them anywhere by helping to unlock their imagination and let it soar. As I was leaving one little girl gave me her poem “I’d like you to have this, it’s for you”. “Are you sure? don’t you want to take it home?” “No, I’d like you to have it”. The poem was on one side — it was one she had learned for the morning’s recital, by Adrian Mitchell. On the other side she had written this note:

"poems are the best - and guess what you are also the best"

I’ll always remember National Poetry Day 2024. 

It was a good day.

(And for completeness, here is the Poo Poem):

Pick up your Poo!

Pick up your poo, Pick up your poo
Leaving it lying there just won’t do
Poo bags are for all, not just the few
For all of our sakes, pick up your poo

Pick up your poo, pick up your poo
Grab it and bag it, don’t leave it to stew
Left to lie on the footpath it’s a hazard, that’s true
So please don’t be shy and pick up your poo

For every terrier and labrador, each pug and cockapoo
Will stop to squat and leave a spot of trouble on your shoe
So bag it up and take it home before it sticks like glue
And please please please please PICK UP YOUR POO!