Celebrating National Poetry Day

In October 2025, celebrated National Poetry day, and to mark the occasion we welcomed Liz Berry, a Birmingham based poet and poetry teacher, to our hospital.

Liz works with our patients as part of our charity funded EnjoyArt programme and inspires them to use creative writing as a way to express themselves.

On National Poetry Day itself, we shared a video of Liz, introducing an easy and fun way to start writing poetry, using a game called ‘excuses’ but during Liz’s most recent visit, she was proud to share our new collaboration – an activity book called ‘Plastic Snakes and Exploding Cakes’.

The book contains 10 inspiring and playful writing activities, written by Liz, and colourful and characterful illustrations by local artist Layla Sadiq, which bring the pages to life, with lots of space for children to write their own masterpieces.

Liz shared the new booklet with patients, including 15-year-old Bella, who let her imagination go wild as they completed the creative poetry activities together.