Moon tell me truth at Dartington Primary

Children at Dartington Primary being inspired by the poetry of the children of Gaza outside the Year 5 and 6 classrooms.

Nearly all the poems in ‘Moon tell me truth’ were written by children in Gaza in the Spring of 2023. Now children around the world are being inspired by these poems; inspired by the beauty of expression by children living in unimaginable conditions and inspired to create their own poetry as a result of reading them.

In this blog post I’d like to share how this has happened at one of my local primary schools in Devon - Dartington Primary. It all started when the school asked me whether they could have the exhibition as a permanent feature and have myself and Peter Oswald to come to the school and do a workshop with the kids there.

Children at Dartington Primary being inspired by the poetry of the children of Gaza outside the Year 5 and 6 classrooms.

All of us at Hands up jumped at the chance of course. All of the year 5 and 6 children came to a workshop where they explored the poems, discussed their favourite ones and then wrote their own. Here are four examples of poems written on that day.

The children at Dartington Primary also had a chance to meet one of the young poets from ‘Moon tell me truth’ - 16 year old Nada Miqdad, who joined us by live video link from Gaza. As you’ll see from the recording below, Nada is a very inspiring speaker and the children at Dartington were very honoured to meet her.

We hope that this is just the beginning of a long relationship between Dartington Primary and the Hands up Project. We hope too that other schools around the world might like to follow Dartington’s example and host ‘Moon tell me truth’ themselves. Please get in touch with Zeina, our events coordinator if you’d like to do that.

Nick