Performance Poet Dreadlock Alien Brings Poetry To Life

17 Jul 2023

As a reward, those students who had made huge progress in their reading were invited to a special event with other schools in the Redhill Trust to see a performance poet called Dreadlock Alien (aka Richard Grant) on 13^th July 2023. He entertained and inspired over 100 year seven students within the trust with his interactive presentations. He started his high-octane presentation by performing an improvised poem that he constructed using students’ names from a register, which had them hooked from the start. There was a huge amount of audience interaction with students being invited to submit words which he wove into instant rhyming couplets to form poetry and then guided them in writing their poems before getting volunteers to stand in front of their peers and recite their poems. 

Lily Mai from PVA was voted first for her poem about her dad, although she broke down the first time she read it, she bravely got back up in front of the audience and read again with pride and determination!  

Librarian Mrs Limb said, “I am extremely proud of Lily Mai She demonstrated great strength and courage, Well done Lily -Mai! I look forward to these events every year, Dreadlock Alien’s love of language is infectious and the students were really attentive. I was extremely impressed with the students who volunteered to get up and read their poems in front of their peers. It was wonderful to see just how interactive and instant poetry can be” 
 
Dreadlock Alien has been touring schools performing his poetry for almost twenty years and this is his fourth visit to The Redhill Academy Trust. He said, ‘The most exciting thing is the changing face of poetry with spoken word and live literature. Spoken word is linked to music. Most adverts nowadays all have little rhymes or raps, so the whole explosion of poetry into spoken word in its many art forms, such as rap, grime, lyrics, that for me is the exciting thing about poetry at the moment.’