Steph's Poetry Space: Poetry for Wellbeing by The Poetry Society

Poetry for Wellbeing

STEPH’S POETR Y SP AC E

Poetry for Wellbeing

The Poetry Society

22 Betterton Street London WC2H 9BX poetrysociety.org.uk

ISBN 978 1 911046 47 9

Cover illustration: Jane Burkowski

WELCOME

Welcome to Steph’s Poetry Space, a new project taking place in schools. The project is run by The Poetry Society and supported by the Steph Lampl Foundation. Hundreds of secondary school students are taking part from across the UK. For more details, head to bit.ly/PoetrySpace

This project is all about poetry and wellbeing. We believe that exploring creativity through poetry helps us thrive – we want to give you the tools to discover writing by poets your age, to find your voice, and to collaborate with other students in your creative response. During the project, you’ll work with a professional poet, who will visit your school to run workshops that open up new ways to engage with poetry. The workshops will be a shared space, one where you can explore reading and writing in a team with other students, and share what you create with your friends and family.

This booklet will help you in those workshops. It’s yours to keep – feel free to make notes, draw on it, highlight anything that speaks to you, and make it your own. In these pages, you’ll find poems by young poets aged 13 upward, with many of the same experiences as you. The poems were written by winners of The Poetry Society’s Young Poets of the Year Award and participants in our online community, Young Poets Network. You’ll read about Nando’s, Dungeons and Dragons, family life, exploring identity, and nature. You can watch some of the young poets reading their poems at bit.ly/PoetrySpaceVideos

In the second half of this booklet, you’ll find blank pages. This is your poetry space, a place where you can note down your own thoughts and feelings – perhaps your reaction to the poems you are reading or perhaps some poems or drawings of your own.

We hope you enjoy taking part in Steph’s Poetry Space and that you’ll stay in touch with The Poetry Society to discover more ways to enjoy poetry in the future.

Sophie Thynne

Nature’s diagnosis

i’m afraid to say i’ve swallowed an apple seed and now it’s growing its roots in my belly. i believe

that the trunk will run straight up through me until i have a wooden spine and ribs of solid oak.

i think the seed will grow, and make branches in my lungs till it pokes holes in the chambers

of my heart. i’ll become a common topiary, a little sapling amongst others and soon leaves and

blossom will sprout from my nose. doctor says not to snack on soil, if i can help it, but mummy

laughed so i think there is no proper cure and i cried in the car as we turned the junction and she turned

to me and said that we’ll go around and round until my pip falls out and i’m just a little pot again.

You dumped me with a ‘sorry chicken x’, so I stole your Nando’s voucher

and went to the Harrow branch.

I went full finobottomless drinks

4 Boneless Chicken Thighs despite Veganuary

Grilled Chicken Wrap Lemon & Herb Sunset Burger Sweet Potato Mash PERi-PERi Nuts and a mixed leaf salad (for balance). Also

I ordered twenty chicken fillets to decorate your bedroom. You will find them in blazer pockets, behind bedsides, stapled to your mood board. Oh! I laid an egg in each of your slippers and plucked all the feathers from your pillow.

There is nothing left on your voucher. Now I’m watching Bake Off in bed toasty as pitta tracking Alfamix chicken feed on the Hermes app.

I’m as sorry as you were, Chick-a-dee. Joy of joys; I’m squawking! Darling, the PERi- PERi chips were a triumph.

A.C.L.

Zayaan Jamil

Odd after Anna Kamieńska’s ‘Funny’

What’s it like to be a big brother the little brother asked

The big brother thought to himself and said “It is having to give some light on their darkest day while waging world war three supporting their every move and chained by the shackles of responsibility showering unconditional love to an unwelcomed perpetual shadow being the rampant monster of the pettiest things whilst being a breath of calm absorbing waves of anger and teaming up as partners in crime having to save the last prawn for the other while stifling your own craving it’s feeling the raging fire but not being allowed to burn yet a bond unbreakable, unique like diamonds it’s being a pillar of support it’s a loyalty so fierce like a tsunami rampaging”

“That is odd” said the little brother and they began to wrestle.

Briancia Mullings

Queen’s Speech

It was mama who taught me, mi please and mi thank-yous, And small island who taught I my vowels

Dem a call it colloquial, slang

It’s my tongue

But mi cyant speak like dem no more now

“This is Queen’s speech, England, Proper way and proper talk.”

De right way, colonised way

Deny your race like issa sport

My “h’s”, my accent

Were indigenous to mi throat

Swallow down hard British water, till your “h’s” begin to float, Till you ah choke

On the tip of your tongue, Wid vowels in de gaps of your teeth

Dem a foreign, dem uncivilised

Dem nah talk like ah we

And in only three years

Did dem manage to tame

Mi wild native tongue

Buried in de back of my brain

That jungle like roar, mi speech would pronounce Hibernates in de fluid of my cerebral doubt

Whitewashed and white drowned

Lungs filled wid invasion

Puffing up my wind box to talk with occasion

Queen’s Speech

Most formal, and most eloquent a pitch. Buoyant fluid words that escape out just in to fit.

Yet I progress to feel morbidly alone, England is not all just London, no Queen’s speech fluid tone

To evolve and to adapt to an international tongue. Just as I struggle wid both Mi cyant identify just wid one

It was mama who taught mi how to switch on and off at my core So, mi used to speak wid Vincy dialect But I can’t speak like that anymore.

Adelina Rose Gowans

and once i was a boy, once a pyromaniac. once named for a seabird curtained midflight. once i spoke three languages, played seven instruments, banished a five-headed dragon god. sharp-toothed. sleepy. i was a liar, then lawful good. a lullaby. well-mannered. disaster. i carried a deck of marked cards. burned chainmail into my arms. on accident. all paladin. all freckled. once i cheated death. an echo. braced my body for the end and won. i was fanged. tusked. i was a daughter. i was a son. a sun.

“the great thing about dungeons and dragons,” i tell my friend, “is you can be anything you imagine.”

Anna Jones

Late Night Egg and Soldiers

I crack into my too-runny egg and the yolk spills into a pool of streetlamp orange. I break into the membrane and carve out curls of white, switching my utensils in rounds of salt, pepper, teaspoon. The metal always crashes through the shell’s stomach. I always forget to be gentle.

Libby Russell

Love Poem to Young Offenders Support Workers

Here, where the streetlights have seen more than any expert, there is a currency in the green ghosts of cheap chains hidden under collars, or in knowing somebody’s brother from school, or in the phone numbers of people who know how to scoop up boys spilling out onto pavements, their limbs limp as weeds, without calling for sirens and warrants and lights; people who know what to say to young men with grey faces trembling blood onto paving stones, and how to empty their hands without trouble. Here, where there are no newspapers, talk is never cheap. There is a currency in handlebar seats, and boys know the value of dragging each other home.

Hannah Burrows

Late August

On the days my pain is a small and questing thing –hot breath misting my eyes, scratching at the door to let her out – I take the dog’s old leash and step out into the pathway of the sun, down the narrowed artery of a gorse-edged track to watch a crowd of starlings char the edges of a clearing and take flight.

As the afternoon light washes us – my small pain and I –in all its burning urgency, anything of me could become folklore. When I think of my past’s unspeakable seasons

I want to scream until my throat is rough and barked over. But somewhere in the distance is the sound of running water, the smell of undying pines.

Each breath feels like a long, cool drink. To enter a forest is to step into the heart of the matter; to carve out a space without breaking it.

Preesha Jain

my grandmother

my grandmother wears silk sarees woven with soft threads from India stained with rich indigo dye; tiny peacocks perch in the folds and flecks of gold adorn them like jewels sparkling with every movement. a red bindi sits between her brows – she’s a queen. but in Tesco she’s an obscurity in the spice aisle.

my grandmother has silver hair plaited in intricate patterns with garlands of yellow marigolds tucked into the strands accompanied with a sprinkling of sweet-smelling jasmine flowers: the marriage of the sun and moon –but in Sainsbury’s she’s an oddity amongst the frozen chapattis.

my grandmother speaks in hindi the language of saffron mangoes, and fragrant blushing lotuses; it flows like the ganga with praises like honeyed rose petals and even the stinging cusses like a biting karela sound like a nightingale song. but her broken English in Morrisons reduces her to suspicious looks at the pickle shelf.

Sinéad O’Reilly

The Party After Jack Underwood

In the room full of people

I want to be the sort of person you’d turn to

If you entered the room blindfolded.

Or at least the one who wears

Shyness like a handwritten invite.

I’d like to have her laugh

Which erupts like a broken hose

Fixing at the wrong time, or his shoulders

Which people love to lay their heads on.

While my skin is sunburnt sea, yours is ice-cubes

In grape juice, and I try to think of something

To say but my gut twinges like a dampened

String when you walk over and sometimes

I want to curl my knees to my chest and crawl

Inside a guitar so I don’t say anything stupid.

Jhermayne Ubalde

A Row of Jam Jars

Seven seashells, washed in two different oceans. A rock with a lopsided grin. A reindeer wearing white glitter. Fairy lights cheerily lugging a slack-jawed battery pack. Lemon soap bubbles. One cup of flour, three tablespoons of cocoa powder and a pinch of salt from kiss-warmed fingertips. A spotted grey feather. Kitchen light, crystallised. Twenty-eight paperclips in various sizes. A slightly waterlogged succulent. A tea candle in motion. The scent of jam.

Ran Zhao

thunderstorm at night and you tell your sister not to be afraid

come here. do you know how thunder is made? lightning rends the atmosphere apart / leaves the air pitted / leaves it negative fractal / sawtooth void in the brightness of the sky. do you hear how the air rushes in, filling the wound of itself? listen, this shuddering of the ground is only an act of healing / only an act of rejoining together. ten thousand feet above us, the sky is mending itself again and again. isn’t that beautiful?

Victoria Fletcher

A Little Bit of Poland in Sudbury Hill

Dear Lord, I thank you for the polski skleps –the strip-lights’ thrum above the counters thick with meat that prune-faced women slap as they walk past; fondle the tomatoes ripe, round, earth-dusty in their plastic crates; eye up the bargains, the joyous promotions –Promocja! Oferta! One-time special discount rates! –and go through the housewife-gone-shopping motions: the wheedle, the barter, demand and bark for a pound off here, a bit more there and survey the brands – Łaciate, Olewnik and Tymbark –brands you’d be hard-pressed to find elsewhere, slug-pickles swimming in emerald brine, treasures each bringing joy beyond Englishmen’s measure.

Lindt Excellence, 85% Cocoa

Pressing into bitter sweet, my tongue explores its way to crooks and bumps to find the melting moment.

Puddled

-up choco

-late dream

-ing stretch

-ing and sink

-ing into the

rigid roof.

Catching and slipp

ing throug

h the Heav en disappe ring on th e soft inside.

The las

t of i

t go

ne i

n s

Emma Rowley Scarlett Timlett-Sheehan

recipe for ending winter

knead the dirt like dough you’ve made bread with your father this is just repeating what you know

the earth breaks against your knuckles crumbles and collects under your nails bright and crisp as winter buckles

the soil shifts between your fingers warm and worn and awake as the sun finally lingers

sew the seeds like stitches patch up the patient now wait. this is spring’s testament

it bears promises of petals, of a rebirth: shoots to roots, head to toes and baskets full of vegetables

the ground is forgiving even after the cold grips the air there is a thaw, the frost is clearing

Zinnia Hansen

Yellow

The man who leaves yellow zucchinis on our front steps grows the sun from the dirt. Love isn’t bright enough to burn

your eyes. It’s just yellow, soft like beeswax or the sign

telling you to slow as you drive down our neighborhood road.

Daniel Wale

Daisy Chains

They never took long to make, nor did they lack that tender sloppiness which made the petals melt pink in the palms, like juiced hearts. These were when we ran our fingers through the wilting stems; supposed they were her hair or her hands. These were when we laboured those shy hours away in a shivering line of blushes, making a short-lived toy of short-lived love.

Abigail Marett

dear reCAPTCHA

dear reCAPTCHA respondent is pleased to confirm she is not a robot

dear reCAPTCHA and as proof respondent would like to present the fact that she has eaten an orange

dear reCAPTCHA and felt her teeth puncture into its muscle

dear reCAPTCHA and had the sweet acidic blood run stickily over her chin

dear reCAPTCHA and has run her fingertips over the waxy sheen of the skin

dear reCAPTCHA and the pad of her thumb over the rough intimate inside

dear reCAPTCHA and smelt the sharp life gather under her nails

dear reCAPTCHA and so respondent hopes that is enough proof that she is not a robot kind regards thank you

My Poetry Space

Use these pages for your own thoughts, images and words.

3838

About This Project

About Steph’s Poetry Space

Steph’s Poetry Space brings together poetry and wellbeing. Run by The Poetry Society and funded by the Steph Lampl Foundation, the project offers secondary school students and teachers around the UK the chance to explore creative reading and writing with a visiting poet. With collaboration, connection and creativity at its heart, Steph’s Poetry Space aims to strengthen wellbeing and celebrate young people’s voices across the school community.

Many thanks to all the young poets whose poems are collected in this booklet and special thanks to all the young people who took part in the project.

We are very grateful to the Steph Lampl Foundation and to Arts Council England for their support in creating this project. Thank you to illustrators Jane Burkowski and Tilda Rae Lakin, evaluators Caroline Ardrey and Martina Diehl, and training facilitator Cheryl Moskowitz. Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for supplying books for each student taking part. Thank you to teachers Gareth Ellis and Samantha Egelstaff for their advice, and to all the poets and teachers who have worked with us on Steph’s Poetry Space.

About The Poetry Society

The Poetry Society is one of the leading poetry organisations in the world. With innovative education and commissioning programmes, and a packed calendar of performances and readings, The Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. The Poetry Society is a registered charity. poetrysociety.org.uk

About the Steph Lampl Foundation

Born in London, Steph Lampl was a very bright, energetic and compelling young woman who loved poetry – both reading it and writing it. She had an amazingly engaging personality and was loved by everyone. When she passed away in 2022 at the age of 21, her family decided to set up the Steph Lampl Foundation in her honour, and to devote the Foundation’s efforts to promoting the pleasures of poetry that Steph knew and enjoyed. The Foundation focuses on young people who would not otherwise have the opportunity to experience poetry. In collaboration with The Poetry Society, Steph’s Poetry Space is the Foundation’s first programme, with many more to follow.

More Ways to Explore Poetry

The Poetry Society offers lots of ways for young people to engage with reading, writing for the page or exploring spoken word.

For Young People

If you’re a young person who wants to find out more about the poetry world, read even more poems by young people, and continue your own creative writing, check out Young Poets Network. A free online platform for young poets worldwide, it’s for everyone interested in poets and poetry – whether you’ve just started out or you’re a seasoned reader and writer. You’ll find features and challenges to inspire you, new writing from young poets, and advice and guidance about next steps in your poetry journey. youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk

The Poetry Society’s Young Poets of the Year Award is an annual writer development programme for young people aged 11–17. For the chance to win amazing prizes, including poetry books, mentoring, publication and talent development opportunities, send in your poems. poetrysociety.org.uk/education

For Schools

Download free poetry teaching resources, lesson plans and activities on our resources site, Poetryclass. Covering all ages and exploring many themes and forms of poetry, each resource has been created by our team of expert poet-educators and teachers. resources.poetrysociety.org.uk

Join us for free online CPD sessions via our poet-teacher network, Cloud Chamber. bit.ly/CloudChamberPoetry

Book a poet to visit your school through our Poets in Schools service. Poets can deliver oneoff workshops, long-term residencies, INSET sessions for staff, and poet-led assemblies. Online and in-person options available. poetrysociety.org.uk/education/poets-in-schools

School membership connects your school with all that poetry has to offer. School members receive books, resources, posters, Poetry News and our internationally acclaimed quarterly poetry magazine The Poetry Review. poetrysociety.org.uk/membership

Each breath feels like a long, cool drink. To enter a forest is to step into the heart of the matter; to carve out a space without breaking it.

From Late August

by Hannah Burrows