We Feed The UK poems will inspire students at hundreds of schools across the UK this autumn, in an exciting collaboration between our partners Hot Poets and National Poetry Day.
On Thursday 1 October, 1.5 million school students will celebrate National Poetry Day. Each year, classrooms are filled with lyrical creativity as more young minds are opened to the transformative potential of poems. For 2026, the theme is “Wonder Our World,“ inspired by Hot Poets’ newly released children’s anthology, Wonder Thunder Blunder, written with Michael Rosen.
With this theme, Hot Poets are hoping to ignite a sense of wonder about our Earth and the urgent need to protect her, individually and collectively.
Jay Bhadricha, Head of Programmes at Forward Arts Foundation, the organisation behind National Poetry Day, is eager for this year to help change the story around the environment for students:
“Poetry has always been about how we make sense of the things that matter most to us. Right now, for millions of young people, the environment is one of those things, and too often it’s a source of dread rather than wonder. That’s what we want to change. Working with Hot Poets, we can reach every school in the UK and give children a creative language for what they’re feeling, and for what’s possible.”
We are thrilled that the official National Poetry Day poems and resources will include We Feed The UK poems Again, Again by Bohdan Piasecki and The Lig by Testament, as well as an additional We Feed The UK-partnered poem, Hooting Hallelujahs in the Dark by Diz Undone, an adaptation of his poem Seeds.
Exploring positive tales of those reconnecting with our living planet, each poem invites readers to dream of juicy tomatoes, burrowing earthworms, hedgehog homes, butterfly corridors, green moss, and sap-filled trees; the type of future abundance that is often forgotten in fear-full teachings about what has gone wrong.
“Children need to be equipped with knowledge and skills, but they also need to be inspired, and to feel a sense of agency and excitement about the future they will shape,” says Michael Rosen, ambassador for the Hot Poets.
All the Hot Poets X National Poetry Day resources are freely available now to browse, download, and share. We can’t wait to witness the creativity they conjure later this year.
