*Please note this transcript is generated using an automated service and it may not be 100% accurate.
First Story presents London voice.
Scarlett: The sky is blue and my aura is negative.
Dean: Hi, my name is Dean Atta. I’m a poet and author. I’m also a creative writing facilitator. For the past year I’ve been a Writer-in-Residence with First Story, England’s leading creative writing charity for young people in state schools.
In the background, you can hear some of the students I’ve been working with at Platanos College in South London.
They are having a lot of fun, performing so-called ‘cringe poems’. Whilst the term ‘cringe poems’ might sound strange, later I’ll tell you why being silly in this way has been such an excellent tool for this group of young people.
In my work with First Story and others, I’m passionate about getting young people excited about writing, reading, and performing. This feels particularly important because levels of writing enjoyment among young people have decreased by 18% since 2010. According to the National Literacy Trust 2024 report, ‘Fewer than 3 in 10 children and young people aged 8 to 18 said that they enjoy writing in their free time.’
Now, you might be thinking—is that such a bad thing? Why should young people write in their free time?
At First Story, we believe that reading, creative writing, and learning to speak with confidence are essential skills that positively impact young people’s wellbeing and, in turn, the wellbeing of society as a whole. Also, it’s fun – creativity as pure enjoyment is valuable in and of itself and something that everyone deserves access to.
This is a podcast that brings the creative voices of young people to the forefront. In each episode, you’ll hear a different writer guiding you through original poems and stories by young people.
Today, you’ll hear poems about owls, movie nights, and family dinners. You’ll also hear why the power of being silly is an essential building block of confidence and skills.
Enough from me, over to the students.
Talia: We need a round of applause, right?
Hilary: Okay. Hi, my name is Hilary and the title of this poem is ‘House of Peace’. Calmness, carefree, careless. Let judgment retreat and peace rise. Do what dwells in your heart. Play darts, bumper cars, always aim far. Imagine the world is yours for a day, have a say. Come out and play. Build something out of clay. Your life, you decide this is the place where you reside, home, school or hotel, be where you fit in well. Do what you love. Be what you love. Live your life as peacefully as a dove. You can be as strong as the ground or as soft as the sky above your choice. Your chance. Join the crowd, do or dance. No one will stop you. No one shall interfere. Say your sentence loud and clear.
Tahlia: My name is Tahlia. This poem is called ‘Under My Skin’. Under my skin is my shirt. My shirt is my skin. Under my skin is my heart. Under my heart are memories, a lot of memories. Movie nights with my mom with pizza and chips and hot wings. Under movie nights with my mom is reading, filling my head with new vocabulary, devouring some cheese and onion crisps at the same time, and a cheese and onion crisps is my mom, my dad taking care of me, making sure I am happy. Under my mom and my dad is my nan. Singing me songs and reading books when I was young. Under my nan is my ninth birthday party full of laughter, dance, and music all around.
Patricia: Hello, my name is Patricia and I’m going to be performing ‘Look at me now’. I was nice, but not anymore. I used to be normal. Look at me now. I was okay. I’m not anymore. I used to be okay in the head. Not anymore. Look at me now. I could breathe. Now I can’t. I could swim. Look at me now. Sitting in the depths of the ocean, even rotting in shark stomachs feels like whale guts all across the world. Secrets. My secrets. Running through everyone’s mind. Look at me now.
Dean: Those three poems came from three different prompts I gave. The second by Talia was inspired by a poem called ‘Underneath’ by Jeff Kass.
Listening to these students speak with quiet confidence makes me think about the work that often goes into supporting a young person’s voice to reach that place.
Some students are already super confident, while others need a push, but all can benefit from letting loose more in the sessions.
This is why we brought in another writer-performer to run a special performance session as part of the First Story London Voice programme. This is where being silly comes in.
Yomi: My name is Yomi Sode, I am a performance poet, writer, playwright, curator and all the things fancy in between.
When you come up to the stage, please make some noise for each other because you’re all family.
The focus on cringe poems is really important because we, y’know poetry can tend to be something that’s looked upon as being serious all the time and we forget the joy and we forget the kind of silly moments and the ways we enter some of our deepest pieces of work. And, interestingly, when the idea of being silly is introduced to the group, each group they’ve just been stunned with the idea of being silly. Even though they’re probably silly in their own time, all the time, when they’re actually being given permission to be silly they find themselves quite frozen. Which, in a sense, speaks a lot more to where we are as a society, as well as where we are individually. And I think that’s why it’s even more important to allow ourselves room for joy and allow ourselves room to be silly in groups, as individuals, to share in the moment. And this is a perfect way to go into that.
Dean: What did the students make of all this? Podcast Producer and fellow poet Talia Randall caught up with the group at Platanos to get their take.
Talia: The point about being cringe and silly.
Scarlett: Uh, mainly because, it was for expressing your feelings. And also like, you don’t have to worry about if you mess up or anyway, because if you mess up, who’s gonna notice? It’s not like they’re gonna walk up to you and like in a few years time and be like, you messed up badly. Like, who’s gonna do that? Also, it’s because you’re gonna express yourself in that. If you’re gonna make some random stuff, you’re gonna be confident in that, right? Because you made it and you’re gonna be the one expressing that. You’re gonna be like, I did this poem and I’m gonna be famous because of it.
Talia: So the idea is about being, letting go, basically. Yeah. Did you guys feel more confident after the workshop?
Patricia: Yeah? Oh yeah. Way more confident.
Talia: Um, why did you feel more confident, Tahlia?
Tahlia: Um, because I was like, sort of like a shy person. I didn’t really like to do speech in front of a lot of people. It was kind of like stage fright. Yeah, but now, after the workshop, I see that it’s not so bad and it kind of like helped me overcome my fear. Yeah.
Talia: That’s really cool. I’m sure you, yeah, you can round, you can clap that.
Dean: I’m so glad it brought them out of their shell.
Now, here’s two more poems. These are inspired by ‘In the Middle of Dinner’ by Chris Abani and ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’ by Emily Dickinson.
Amy: Hello, my name is Amy, and this poem is called ‘In the Middle of Dinner’. In the middle of dinner, I saw my brother’s bloodshot eyes, so I read from what I didn’t know. Was I too young to understand? I watched and asked him what happened, but all he did was shake his head left to right with a numb expression, then randomly dashed upstairs.
I heard my mom shout at him. Confused, I was. Why didn’t he finish his food? I stabbed my fork in tender chicken and placed it in my mouth. Tongue twisted, I was. I walked up to his door asking again what happened, as I tasted the leftover chicken seasonings, took over the words in my mouth, but all I heard was his sorrows and cries.
Scarlett: My name is Scarlet and my poem is, ‘Hope is An Owl’. An owl is serene and quiet, but oh, why hope, why can’t that be me? I love staying awake at night. The stars glistening in delight. It seems I am an owl at best, so why hope? Why can’t that be me? I tried my best for you, Hope, your cold hands grasping at my thighs. I really had to help you, so I only helped you once, Hope.
I released you, hope, in the last month of 2024, thinking that I’ll be all right. However, that failed badly. So why hope. Why would you have to leave? I’m sad that I took you for granted, my leg shrivelled up because of you. It seemed as if you would never leave as if you weren’t in a rush.
Hope, I know you’ll come back, please. Some day I plead. I only have your scars as memories, so please come back to me. I want to carry on for you, Hope, you’re the owl I need. I seek for your comfort, it’s almost so easy to see. Please, hope, come back. I miss you dear and my owl, Hope. Please, my owl Hope. Please, my owl hope.
Dean: As a freelancer, I often wonder: Will these students continue writing and reading for pleasure once the project is done? It’s sometimes hard to tell the impact you’ve had when you’re moving from school to school.
Producer Talia was wondering about this too when she spent the afternoon with the Platanos poets.
Talia: Is it something that you’d like to do more of?
Hilary: Yeah, absolutely. Wee.
Talia: That’s good. Wee wee. And, do you guys read and write for fun in your own time? Yes. Yeah. Amy, tell me about that.
Amy: Basically, I really enjoy writing about like, my personal stuff, but like, not in like writing forms, more like in poem form. For example, I have a small book at home. I plan to write like poems every week, which will bring me up to like 42 poems this year.
Patricia: Just because you are young doesn’t mean you have like the power to not write. You just have to get your pen sit down, open that book, open that, flip the pages to get to the page, write, express all your feelings until your pen runs out or your hand stops working.
Talia: I love that. What a good piece of advice. Do you think that people, let’s say people my age, adults, right? Do you think that the average adult expects people your age to be reading and writing as much as you do, or do you think that some people might be surprised by that? Go on.
Hilary: I think some people can go beyond the expectation of what adults, ’cause sometimes they’re even kids that could write more than adults. So I believe I could be beyond the expectation of writing.
Dean: Thanks for listening to First Story Presents: London Voice. I’ve been Dean Atta, your host for today’s episode.
In the next episode, I’ll be handing the mic to another writer who’ll guide you through the wonderful creative minds of students at Skinner’s Academy in North London.
Kids should feel more open to speaking, like really. Because at school we don’t really get the opportunity to talk aloud a lot and I guess that kind of impacts how you do it in the future…
First Story Presents: London Voice was produced by Talia Randall in collaboration with First Story. It was mixed by Jamie Payne. This was a First Story project.
This podcast is part of the wider London Voice programme, an exciting new oracy pilot delivered by First Story, England’s leading creative writing charity for young people.
Over the course of this academic year, First Story has been working with six non-selective secondary schools in Greater London as part of London Voice.
It’s aim? To help young people develop as writers who have a voice and the skills and confidence to be heard.
Students from Hampstead School, St Paul’s Way School, Platanos College, Skinners’ Academy, Trinity Acadamy and St Saviour’s and St Olave’s Church of England School have had the opportunity to take part in creative writing, performance and audio workshops led by skilled industry professionals. This podcast is one of the outcomes of their work.
London Voice has been made possible by the generous support of The Mercers’ Company, trustee of St Paul’s Schools Foundation.
To find out more about First Story and London Voice, visit First Story dot org dot uk and join the conversation on Instagram by searching firststory_uk.
