Recommended for ages Key Stages 3 and 4 (ages 13+)

Creative and energetic in equal measures, performance poet Joelle Taylor offers a workshop on poetry slams, talking through how to create high impact poems for performance, offering hints and tips and giving a special performance of her own work.

To download an education pack with resources for this event, click here.

If you have enjoyed this film, why not try these activities:

  • Watch the video Words that Burn by Joelle Taylor to discover why she writes poetry, what inspires her and more of her advice.
  • Watch The Poetry Society’s short video A Very English Apocalypse: A Poetry Workshop with Joelle Taylor.
  • Create your own poem based on lines from Joelle’s poem here.

About The Poet

Joelle Taylor Headshot

Joelle Taylor

Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet, playwright and author. Taylor founded SLAMbassadors, the UK’s national youth slam championships, for the Poetry Society in 2001, and was its Artistic Director and National Coach until 2018. She is the host and co-curator of Out-Spoken, the UK’s Centre’s premier poetry and music club, resident at the Southbank Centre Purcell Room. Taylor is the author of three poetry collections, three plays, and a collection of short stories, The Night Alphabet (forthcoming). She is widely anthologised and her work is taught as part of the OCR GCSE syllabus. A Radio 4 documentary about her work, Butch, was broadcast in 2020. She has also featured on The Verb R3, Power Lines R4, Poetry Please Radio 4, Educating the East End (ITV), and We Belong Here (BBC).Taylor is a Fellow of the RSA, received a Change Maker Award from the Southbank Centre in recognition of the impact SLAMbassadors has had on British culture, and was longlisted for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2017 and 2019.