Celebrate National Poetry Day (2nd October 2025) or World Poetry Day (21st March 2026) with an in-person or live streamed workshop from As Creatives! 

Playing-With-Poetry

National Poetry Day is the annual mass celebration on the first Thursday of October that encourages all to enjoy, discover and share poetry. Year on year, our National Poetry Day programmes prove popular and successful right across the country and we’ve developed a whole range of programmes to tie in with the 2025 theme of Play: Playing with Poetry! 

These workshop always sell out well in advance so please get in touch to secure your date. 

Poetry is nothing if not playful – because, rooted in the imagination, poetry is simply playing with words! And Playing with Poetry has been designed to take the sometimes intimidating sting out of poetry by letting children experience for themselves the power and ease of playing with language.

Find out more about our full range of poetry workshops available throughout the school year - 

"The immersion aspect was particularly effective in engaging the pupils and this led to high standards of written poetry. All teachers were full of praise for the workshops and were delighted with the pupil outcomes and engagement. We would love to arrange another visit for next year!" Head of English, Immanuel and St Andrews School

Playing with Poetry: Primary Schools

Playing with Poetry can accommodate the whole of up to a two-form entry school in a single day: an assembly at which a member of our team shares a favourite poem, workshops culminating in collaborative poems and, if time allows, a second assembly, too – in which classes share and celebrate their poems.

EYFS and KS1 / P1 – P3: children are introduced to a number of wild animals from around the world and imagine what it takes to play at being some of them. They then harvest the fruits of their imaginations to create a collaborative rhyming a poem: “Playing at being a …”.

Years 3 & 4 / P4 & P5: pupils discover for themselves ways in which randomness can enrich poems by letting “chance” take the lead and inspire collaborative and completely unique Dada Poems!

Years 5 & 6 / P6 & P7: people find out about Edward Lear, the “father” of nonsense poetry – and follow some of his approaches to craft collaborative limericks about people who come from – well, anywhere, really!

We will send you designed and illustrated versions of all the collaborative poems.

 

Playing with Poetry: Secondary Schools

Playing with Poetry can accommodate up to 30 KS3/4 students at a time, in workshops lasting from a single lesson, allowing a member of our team to work with a large number of students in just one day. It’s also possible, too, to deliver longer, more in depth workshops to fewer groups. Students select one of three individuals known for their playful approaches to life – then work collaboratively to write one of the most playful forms of poem, a daisy chain poem!

We will send you designed and illustrated versions of all the collaborative poems.

 

"Each class thoroughly enjoyed the poetry workshops and enjoyed taking an active role in order to create their ideas. Using drama to create an orchestra of sounds for our soundscape poems was fantastic to see and I know that we plan to use this strategy with the children again! Thank you for inspiring the children, so they could create such wonderful ideas!" Windsor CP School