Oxfordshire Hospital School held an exciting poetry podcast event called ‘Poetry Conversations on the Hospital Hubbub’ on July 2nd, 2018, as part of the ‘Oxford Festival of the Arts’. The event was a wonderful celebration of our students, poetry and the work of the school.
The podcasts are the result of a collaboration between the radio producer, Penny Boreham, and English teachers at Oxfordshire Hospital School, who have been sharing poetry with young people in hospital as a means of encouraging engagement with the curriculum, alongside supporting well-being. We would like to thank Penny for sharing her wonderful expertise with staff and students at OHS and to Ruth Charity, from Artlink at the Oxford Hospitals Charity, for her support in getting the project off the ground.
We are immensely grateful to all the poets and writers who have given up their time to either visit us or to share poetry which has inspired them over the course of the project. Special thanks to the writers Catherine Lloyd, John Foster, Paula Byrne and Andrew Schuman (of ReLit) for helping to bring poetry to life for young people in the hospital classroom and also to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, the creators of the wonderful poetry anthology, ‘Lost Words: A Book of Spells’, which has enchanted us all.
Lastly, thank you to the young people involved in the project, whose resilience, wisdom and positive energy – in the face of their personal difficulties – is a continual inspiration.
Catherine Costello, Curriculum Leader English and the Arts OHS
You can listen to the podcasts below:
Still I Rise
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt
Children’s Compilation
Invictus
Kingfisher
Upon Westminster Bridge
The Charcoal Burner
Artwork, inspired by local artist Dionne Freeman, along with poetry responses was also on display throughout the festival in the main hub tent. The image accompanying this article is a collage based on ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ by Edward Lear.
More details on the project can be found on the Oxford Festival of the Arts website.