Just before half term, the English department ran a poetry competition on the theme of change. Staff and students posted their entries into a post-box in one of the English classrooms. We were delighted with the entries. This is the winning poem...

Morph - By Jemma Oldroyd (Year 9)

The darkness is absolute,
Curled up inside my shell.
I lie in my shadowed cocoon,
The mirrored walls reflecting me back a hundred times.
They push me down,
As I struggle, blind, to escape.

Stop.

A word and then,
An overwhelming strength.
A surge of power pushes me up and out,
So fast that I hit the side of my prison,
And the glass walls start to crack.

The cracks spread and my darkened world shatters,
The shimmering shards falling at my feet.
And as my eyes meet the brilliance of the morning,
A beacon shoots forward,
Illuminating the path.

Ablaze,
I step into the light.

The following poem was Highly Commended.

80 Years Onwards – By Rebecca Turner (Year 10) 
Rebecca wrote this poem about her grandmother escaping Prussia in World War II.

It’s changed. 
She’d been here,
80 years ago.
80 years ago she trudged
through the winter sludge.
Away from the fire and blood and anguish.

Memories flicker and
twist round each bend.
Escaping the Beast of the East,
The Monster of the North,
The creatures who threatened
her town,
her family.

Yes, memories shaped as a train, 
a railway,
a long walk in the winter wilderness.
Being late for a passage of peace.
The very same idea, pulled,
to the watery underworld.

It’s changed. 
She’d been here,
80 years ago.
But it was not the
Prussia she remembered.