Twin Poets bring spoken word to Cape High students

Delaware’s Twin Poets recently visited Cape Henlopen High School, sharing their talent, knowledge and poetry with students throughout the day.

In partnership with the Joshua M. Freeman Foundation arts education program, the Twin Poets delivered two grade-level assembly recitations, as well as classroom workshops supporting the national Poetry Out Loud competition.

In 2015, Albert Mills and Nnamdi Chukwuocha became the first African Americans to hold the poets laureate title for the State of Delaware, and they are the first twins, siblings and spoken word artists to share this title. Their goal in sharing their poetry is to teach students about the importance of self-expression, and how, through writing down their thoughts, they can help themselves and others through struggles and challenges.

English teachers Emma Anderson and Ianna Natoli hosted the Twin Poets and members of the Freeman Foundation during their planning period, when a writing workshop was conducted with the high school literary magazine students.

“Our students had the chance to work directly with the Twin Poets one-on-one while they participated in small, coffee-house style readings,” said Anderson. “They were able to engage in creative writing exercises and produce their own poetry, which even earned them a shout-out during the second assembly of the day. The poets shared that they were some of the best student poets that they had the pleasure of working with this year.”