Phillip Willcox Poetry Slam Chamption Visits Year 7

Award winning Australian performance poet, Phil Wilcox, joined year 7 students on Thursday for a day of percussive rhythms and powerful images. A playwright and slam poetry champion, Phil started the day with an immersive presentation to the whole year group. He told us how his love of poetry started,  how he went on to win local poetry slams and treated us to several of his best works. The presentation ended with students contributing to a final performance by providing Phil with a short, simple truth beginning with ‘Everybody knows…’ Year 7s rose to the challenge, writing sometimes profound, sometimes surreal and often hilarious observations about the world before the top twenty were performed by Phil.

After the assembly, year 7 classes attended workshops with Phil in the school library. This was the students’ opportunity to find out the professional secrets behind writing poetry that spoke ‘truth’. Phil shared unexpected rules like ‘sprinkle rhyme like salt for taste, don’t drown your meal in it!’ and taught students an effective code to aid their memories when performing their poems aloud.

'Everybody Knows...' Quotes by year 7 students.