And so we reach the end of another school year. Where did the time go?!

It’s been an amazing first twelve months for Sound of Pen. It started with a collection of unseen poetry lessons that – when we finished putting that series together on July 23rd 2020 – covered the WHOLE of Taylor Swift’s catalogue.

And, then, the very next morning, the singer surprise-released ‘folklore’…

So we designed lessons around ‘exile‘, ‘mirrorball‘ and more.

Of course, we couldn’t stop there.

We started exploring all our favourite music for doorways that would lead to a deeper understanding of our GCSE and A-Level texts. Those doorways weren’t hard to find. The ideas that were important to Fitzgerald, Shakespeare and Blake are just as important to Against The Current, Enter Shikari and Kim Petras.

In May, we started putting together our Wormholes podcasts and we’re so grateful to Lucas from Holding Absence and Theresa from YONAKA for seeing the beauty in this project and offering their support.

Such awesome people…

This summer…

We’re going to begin work on a podcast that will run in tandem with our Wormholes series. Ims and Emily from Bittersweet Press will be coming on board to work with a few of the students from our core Sound of Pen crew on that. Very, very exciting! Then we’ll look to take the actual Sound of Pen classes into bigger halls. See below to get some sense of the 13 live sessions we’ve run so far.

We’ll look forward to seeing YOU soon x

Go here to look at our favourite songs from the first half of 2021- they’ll help you to develop the way you start your essays, and show you how to wow your examiner with ideas of mindblowing originality!

Cover photo by Vishnu R Nair.