Trevor posing for Knock out News reporters
(picture taken by Louise Forrester and Katie Reynolds)

In the autumn, the DfEE and Buckingham Palace will launch a National school poetry competition which will be fronted by Andrew Motion, the poet laureate. Two subject Associations (NATE and the National Poetry Society) will help with the judging.

The event will be the start a National Poetry Year.

Cheslyn Hay thought that they’d get ahead of the game and start to raise the profile of poetry in the curriculum- thus Trevor Millum’s visit.

Trevor, who is Communication and Development Director of NATE and also works part time for a software company called Resource, began the launch with a whole school presentation of his collected works in a special assembly.

Trevor doesn’t read his poems.

He performs them!

After the assembly, 40 youngsters in the Junior department worked with Trevor to produce their own poems which they later performed for their parents in another special assembly at 2.30 in the afternoon.

That didn’t give them long!

Composing poetry is actually fun!

Now what shall we write about?

This one’s almost finished Trevor

You don’t write a poem in 5 minutes. The youngsters learned that you have to keep working on a text and re-draft it.

And so to practise for the parent assembly.

I think they’ll need to see your face Joanne!

David’s poem was about a London "down and out"

Parents and poets meet in the large hall for the assembly

The day was a great success. The children learned much about how poetry is written. Perhaps the most important lesson was that poetry is fun!

All Trevor’s collected poems sold out.

Thanks to Trevor for taking time out of his busy schedule to spend a day with us as "Poet in Residence".

Martin Tibbetts

20 June 2001