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Age guideline 13+
About the event
World Poetry Slam Champion and maths graduate Harry Baker realises not everyone loves maths and poetry as much as him, but believes everyone could get something from it if they gave it a chance. In this session he shares the best poem in the world (!) and a story about prime numbers, before challenging you to write some of your own mathsy poems! Despite initially seeming like very separate things, maths and poetry are all about connection and can help shape the way we see the world around us, whether through alliteration, personification or just pure imagination. You will be given a chance to play with words and numbers, and who knows where it could take you?
Buy the book here: The Sunshine Kid - Harry Baker
How to access the event
From 1 January 2022, this event will move to our collection of Past Event Videos where you can access all past festival events for a small one-off fee of £5. Go to the top of the page to view Past Event Videos. Please click here to sign up or log in if you are already a member.
Teacher Resources
In this event Harry tells us about his journey to becoming a spoken word poet, performs some of his poems and invites us to use some literary devices to create and structure a poem of our own, inspired by patterns and numbers.
Link this event to work on performance poetry, exploring how Harry creates impact in his performance, and how he plays with language. Performing poems created in response to the event will help develop confidence in spoken language.
You could use this event as part of National Poetry Day celebrations. National Poetry Day takes place on 7th October 2021.
The Poetry Society has free resources for schools: https://resources.poetrysociety.org.uk/
There’s also resources on the National Poetry Day website: https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/education/
Apples and Snakes are another great Spoken Word Poetry organisation: https://applesandsnakes.org/
About the Author
Harry Baker has loved words from a young age, enjoying life as a full-time poet since he graduated from Bristol with a maths degree in 2015. Most commonly this takes the form of staged performances and sharing his words with others, but he is always looking to collaborate with new people and finding different places to perform.
Harry became the youngest ever Poetry World Slam Champion in 2012, and his first collection of poems The Sunshine Kid was published with Burning Eye in December 2014. He is currently working on his second collection, as well as regularly giving workshops and performances and having fun touring around the UK as part of Harry And Chris.
Twitter: @harrybakerpoet
Instagram: @harrybakerpoet
Facebook: harrybakerpoetry
Website: https://www.harrybaker.co
About the festival partner
This event has been programmed by Wigtown Book Festival.
Established in 1999, Wigtown Book Festival takes place each autumn in Scotland's National Book Town. The town, home to more than a dozen second hand and new bookshops, welcomes almost 30,000 visitors to the Festival which takes place over 10 days and presents almost 300 events for adults, young people and children. The 2021 Festival takes place from 23 September - 3 October. More information can be found at wigtownbookfestival.com.