Adisa the Verbaliser, Performance Poet visits TRS

Adisa the Verbaliser, performance poet, visited our school on Friday, 24th May 2013.  In his own words, he believes that “poetry should be read, sung, and rapped from every corner of the globe, and performed on every stage that can sustain the weight of the spoken word”.

The day was split into two.  In the morning he performed a selection of his poems including Lady onyx, Just 10 and Phat Buck in the War Memorial Library for Year 9 students.  Full of energy, humour and a passion for poetry, he made the students feel at ease.  He also laid himself open to answering any question they wanted to ask him, either about the poetry or about himself.  He encouraged them to talk about what they thought his poems were about and to ask him questions about anything they wanted.  The performance was very interactive with the students encouraged to join in and even try to anticipate the words of Adisa's poems.

In the afternoon he held poetry workshops, working one to one with the students.  He helped them create their own poems, which were personal to them, using a variety of clever techniques. The students said that “Adisa was a great performance poet”, “he moved around the class really well to work with everyone” and that “he gave us confidence with our poetry writing”.

At the beginning of the day the children were in awe of Adisa, who is over six foot tall, but by the end they were laughing with him and wanting to shake his hand. Copies of Adisa's book, Lip Hopping With the Fundi-Fu, are available to borrow from the Discovery Library.