Paul Hughes’ review of my schools readings in Reading

Paul writes on his blog Jake the Cake:

“And so I had the pleasure of watching her perform a variety of these poems to children (aged 11-14) in two local secondary schools.  Her performances are interactive, entertaining, educational and full of nuggets of poetic brilliance and inspiration for the poets of tomorrow. She has a lovely way with students and they warmed to her personable manner. I intend to visit schools in the future and watching her perform was a wonderful demonstration of what can be achieved when a skilled poet, with a warm personality, meets with students.

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She is currently willing to perform for free, particularly to schools local to her Cheshire home, and I’d advise any teachers reading this to have her visit ASAP!”

I am still offering these promotional readings and Cheshire schools are welcome to contact me. I am equally comfortable in primary and secondary, have a full CRB and plenty of enthusiasm. It is important to me to make my book accessible to children and the best way is through readings. They can be as short as ten minutes or as long as a hour.  In return I expect schools to inform pupils that the author coming in has books for sale, and the cost of them, which is £6.99. Travel expenses are appreciated, or enough book sales to cover my outlay.

I do workshops at £250 per day (and pro-rata) plus expenses.

A school in Kent said this about my workshops:

‘Every girl and boy enjoyed the poetry workshop with angela.  From Kennings to collaborative poetry, we were all given the opportunity to write and explore our own thoughts and feelings.  each child recited at least one poem to the group and they were all well received and appreciated.

My girls were desparate to share what they had learned with the rest of the class.  Even I was motivated to twrite possibly the best comparative, descriptive verses I have ever done!  Thank you’

Wayne Rhodes (Year 6 classteacher)

If any parents or grandparents reading this want to suggest me to schools their children or grandchildren attend, I would be very grateful. I am also interested in doing inset work with teachers. I did do some leading of inset days when I was teaching, which were very well received, and I have written GCSE textbooks on how to teach poetry. I am also an A level moderator for a leading board and have led A level workshops and written critical works for A level and undergraduate students. I have led teacher training sessions for trainee teachers and given talks for OUP on the new GCSE specifications.

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