Could there be a theme more pressing or more pertinent for UNESCO World Poetry Day this year than peace and inclusion?
Could there be a genre more suited to avoiding rhetoric and yet shocking us into empathy, understanding and action than poetry?
This year, as a member of the Opening Doors team, I have been extraordinarily lucky that the writer, campaigner, naturalist, zoologist Nicola Davies has given permission for us to print and design a learning sequence using her poem ‘Unbroken’ from the powerful anthology ‘Choose Love.’ Nicola was inspired to write the anthology by real interviews and stories of forced migrancy across the world.
Politically charged topics like migrancy and refugees can be difficult to explore in schools: the right poem often renders the most sensitive of topics approachable and explorable. In the words of Seamus Heaney:
‘I can’t think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people’s understanding of what’s going on in the world.’
I have tried my best to design a learning sequence here that supports learners to build and share their own understanding, through reading, talking and writing.
Download the sequence here.
With enormous thanks to Lucy Delbridge and the team at Crown House who produced the booklet and to Nicola Davies for her kind permission to print the poem. Do get in touch with responses and writing from your classrooms.