Rowan McCabe’s Workshop for Calday Grammar School - Lower 6th – January 2018

In February 2017 we saw Rowan McCabe on the BBC News and thought what an inspiring young man he was and how great it would be if we could somehow work with him to inspire more entries for the annual Wirral wide Poetry Extravaganza which is funded by our charity.

Rowan from Newcastle upon Tyne became the world’s first Door-to-Door Poet. Knocking on strangers’ houses, he asks what is important to them; he then goes away and writes a poem about this, free of charge, before bringing it back and performing it on their doorstep. The project has been featured in the Guardian, as well as on BBC Breakfast and was named ‘Best of Today’ on Radio 4.  Rowan has performed on stages around the country, from the Edinburgh Fringe to Glastonbury Festival. 
You can read more about Rowan on his website https://rowanthepoet.com/  
or follow him on Twitter @RowanMcCabe and Facebook - Rowan McCabe.

We got in touch with Rowan and were delighted that he replied offering not only to write a poem and the foreword for our 2018 Poetry Anthology but also offering to hold a workshop, which we could fund through the charity. After being invited in to Calday Grange Grammar School to deliver a talk to the year 7 and 8 assemblies about the 2018 extravaganza we thought it would be great if we could also encourage and inspire some of the older students as well. So we got in touch with the school and a workshop was arranged for the lower sixth English students to help them with their unseen poetry exam, where they could also analyse a few of Rowans poems. The feedback we got was “Rowan was amazing at Calday today! He really got on with the students, who loved his poems and really got to grips with them. The teacher said that the workshop had exceeded all her expectations! So, good job, well done!"

We look forward to working with Rowan again in the future and offering more workshops to other schools in the area. So we had better get on and do some more fundraising!