In 2025 I completed the TAP+ (Teacher Artist Partnership) programme, a Department of Education initiative in conjunction with Creative Ireland that connects professional artists with primary schools through artist residencies in order to show children what it’s like to run an artistic practice. I am now registered with BLAST (Bringing Live Arts to Students and Teachers) and available for mixed-media poetry residencies and workshops.

In my workshops, we read, write and share poetry together. We play with various poetic forms like blackout poetry and haikus as well as play word and sound games in order to get an understanding for rhythm and rhyme in a natural musical way rather than a purely academic one, which they will be touching on as part of their English curriculum anyway.

I can adjust the workshops for any age group. Younger classes include more rhyme and word games and focus on imagination and communal poems written together on the blackboard. For older classes, there is more independent work but as I have a background is in visual art, for all age groups I include a lot of illustration, colouring and collage in order to get them thinking about poetry in new ways. I try to be as inclusive as possible, as I am conscious not all brains work in the same way and some children feel more comfortable if, at first, they are allowed to respond to poems visually, through mark making, colour or pattern.

We also work toward a finished project. In the past we have created a podcast where the students read their poems and talk about what they have enjoyed. We have also had a poetry performance where the class wrote a poem together and performed it at a school concert.

My focus when working with children is process. I’ve noticed that pupils are inclined to want to erase their mistakes. I encourage the students I work with to keep everything, so that they can see how a poem evolves over time. That the finished product is all the more valuable when you can trace the experimentation that has gone into it.