St. Julie's celebrated National Poetry Day 2020 this week, on Thursday 1st October. This year's theme was vision and everyone across the school had the opportunity to read poetry, enjoy poetry and even be a poet! 

2020 has been a year of considerable change, and more people than ever are turning to poetry. Since March, the number of Instagram posts tagged #poetry have increased by 6million (to 46million). Poetry has a vital role to play in everyone’s educational and social development: it changes lives by boosting confidence, improving communication skills, fostering creativity and building communities.

In school, students in English lessons studied a poem called 'The Eye Chart' by Nuala Watt, which is structured like the eye test you take at the opticians. Poems were displayed across the building to read and be enjoyed.

Finally, this week we have seen entries to the St. Julie's Blackout Poetry Competition coming in thick and fast. This competition is open to all students in Years 7 to 13.  Blackout poetry is when a page of text — usually an article from a newspaper — is completely blacked out (coloured over with permanent marker so that it is no longer visible) except for a select few words. When only these words are visible, a brand new story is created from the existing text. 

Happy National Poetry Day 2020!