workerspoetry
Migrant Children Poetry Cup
At the Peizhi School, a poetry competition collected over 110 original poems from migrant students. The event was designed to encourage self-expression and creative confidence among children from migrant backgrounds.
Migrant Children Poetry Cup
At the Peizhi School library in Guangzhou, I led a poetry workshop for primary students focused on developing their understanding of metaphor, rhythm, and imagery. In the first part of each session, we read and discussed selected poems together, identifying the literary devices used and exploring how they created meaning and emotion.
After several workshop sessions with more than sixty third- and fourth-grade students, I decided to initiate the Migrant Children Poetry Cup as a way to celebrate their growing creativity. Students were invited to handwrite their poems on themes such as emotions, memories, and daily experiences, and were encouraged to decorate their pages with drawings or illustrations. The emphasis was not on competition but on expression.
I then introduced additional examples, demonstrating how these techniques could be adapted to express the students’ own thoughts and experiences. In the final segment, students were encouraged to write freely—either drawing on the themes and skills we had discussed or experimenting through open-ended creative writing.
The workshop fostered both literary curiosity and confidence, showing students that poetry could be a personal form of self-expression rather than a distant academic exercise.
All of the submitted works were collected and compiled into a printed anthology, which was later distributed to students, teachers, and parents throughout the school community. The collection became both a celebration of the students’ creativity and a testament to the power of self-expression among migrant children.
