Read some of the poems written by our exceptional English students.
As part of our Pearson Edexcel curriculum, our English International GCSE students were recently given the assignment to craft their very own poems.
The theme of the poem? Students had to tackle a relevant social issue.
Miss Ledwidge's Bonsai class wrote about mental health, gender inequality and other social justice issues. She highlights a few of the top poems here:
Amber: What a wonderful world
We celebrate femininity and grace,
By tearing and bloodying her lace.
We guarantee equal rights and the start to healing,
By restricting some with a glass ceiling.
What a wonderful world.
We promise to serve and protect,
By digging our knees into the back of tired, brown necks.
We applaud confidence and pride,
By bashing and abhorring anything abnormal we’ve eyed.
What a wonderful world.
We teach ourselves how to share,
By consuming and hoarding more than what is fair.
We swear to be kind and caring to our only earth,
By poisoning it and robbing it from any rebirth.
What a wonderful world.
We connect ourselves through magical, glowing screens,
By annihilating people for their mistakes and ruining teens.
We vow to help and uplift each other,
By treating the disadvantaged as burdens like we are not sister and brother.
What a wonderful world.
We say we are civil and can talk to each other,
But humanity is stuck in a broken tumble dryer.
Zareena
Animals and people lose their homes every minute
We supposedly have hearts, but nothing in it.
We are puppets in the hands of greed,
We hunger for power like it is a need.
The trees cry out as we chop forests of them down
As though we do not need them to breathe.
We throw them away as though they have no worth
We forget; There is only one earth,
Mother nature is on her knees
Begging please
“Please my children save me,
forget the money made of my tree”
Our earth is sick,
As we plunder it with our sticks
Yet we forget; There is only one earth
Savanna
It’s only the ghosts in her room and her cat that know,
of her façade she so strongly fights to hold up.
One that relentlessly breaks at her bones,
one that her tears with, could fill more than a cup.
But she smiles.
It’s only when the night’s silence is at its loudest,
that her devils come out to play.
And more and more, she feels like a houseguest,
in her own mind, as if she’s there just to stay.
But she smiles.
It’s only at dawn when the circus has to start,
like an escape from hell with a return ticket.
She gets dressed once more and practices her laugh,
that people are so fond of, and she must grapple the bigot.
But she smiles.
You could say it’s funny, but really, it’s not,
that no one knows of her pain.
And she can’t tell anyone, for she’ll be mocked,
like a parrot locked in a cage.
But she smiles.
But for now, she’ll continue to walk her way on,
dangerously close to the edge.
Until one day, the winds are too strong,
and put her gentle soul to rest.
But she smiles.
Tyla: A womxn today.
I think I made you up inside of my head
A girl,
Who enjoyed rainy days,
And comfy crisp sheets
In a white queen bed,
With a coffee scent
In the air,
Floating,
And warming,
Every inch of my heart.
I think I made her up inside of my head,
A girl who felt free, and would wrestle with
Her dad in the bed,
I think I’m losing the memories in my head.
Of the girl I used to be,
A girl before she was scared.
A distant memory, of a time where she was free
Before she danced with society.
Sarah: For All
Education is for all
And rightfully so
Yet there’s a little girl that I know
Who can’t believe that to be so
For when she goes to class
She barely gets taught
Since the class is cramped
The teacher is distraught
At least one would think
She could refer to a book
Yet those are scarce and scattered
Oh! This world is too cruel
There’s no library, nor sanitary loo
Where the kids could go, should they need to
Let’s not forget the lack of laboratories
But that’s no surprise, there’s no electricity
Education is for all
And rightfully so
We must work to ensure this
So promising young minds can grow.
Matt
Preface:
-This poem addresses mental health as a social issue but conveys it through the eyes and
emotions of the furniture.
-It affirms and portrays the basic remedies of a depressive episode setting in (Stanza 1: ‘They’
changed to ‘him’ [insinuating a divorce]).
-The use of repetition is implemented, not to waste space, but to convey denial in the man. The
deviation from grammatically correct stanzas insinuates that the man is urgently looking for
answers, only to have them drift further and further away.
- The rest of the poem is complete interpretation and can be analyzed on the same level
as art would.
The clock straightened its eyelids before it chimed
Today, they drank whiskey
Tomorrow, they drunk
Wine.
They began to drink tea,
And then,
Coincidentally, they moved to coffee,
Each day a different character,
As if each day a dose of timelessness
And psilocybin had been
Administered
The working class
The working clas
The working cla
The working cl
The working c
The working
The workin
The worki
The work
The wor
The wo
The w
The
Th
T
Society! Have you no integrity!
Have you no gait? How strange you are?
Critique me?
The clock straightened its eyelids before it chimed
Today, they drank coffee
Tomorrow, they drunk
Tea.
Wait!
Wai
Wa
W
!
The hairs on the chairs stood up as the clock stared and the fridge bared a glare so sincere
there was, in the air, aA decision had been made,
Today there was change!
Instead of whiskey,
Or tea
Or coffee,
A bargain can of tuna had been placed,
On the table,
With such grace,
(and gait)
That even the sun peeked through the curtains to examine change of days
But, there wasn’t,
And at a sudden loss for taste,
Creativity thrown,
Enigma gone to waste,
The man went and placed,
The bargain can tuna at the back of the cupboard.
Oh, The Working Class! Oh, the government! Oh, the politics!
Who else is there to blame?
Who else is there to blame?
Who else is there to blame?
The clock needn’t straighten its eyelids,
It had already been awake,
The light left on forever,
There
Was
No
Change
In
Days.
Wait!
Wai
Wa
W
Finally, a clutter and a bang and the man walked through,
Sighs echoing within him loudly,
Because he was hollow to the core.
He opened the cupboard door.
No politics on the top right shelf,
No society hidden behind a jar of peanut butter.
Only whiskey,
And coffee,
A tea bag,
A plate,
No change,
No blame.
Which character today?
Oh, the pain,
Oh, how tired he has grown, eyes with no seduction and voice with no tone,
He gazed at the doorknobs, as he only saw sadness in the movement of its hands.
He gazed at the table,
At the tiles,
But a stare so shallow was a stare that ran for miles.
Who to go back too?
The tea,
The coffee?
The whiskey,
What did he like, before?
The
Tea
And
The
Whiskey
He couldn’t remember,
The chair exchanged a bittersweet stare with the kettle and a pear and an apple, all coated with
a scent
Of
Petrichor.
Unable to share or care,
They watched the human soul wear and tear
He looked everywhere,
Beneath his suit,
In the threads of his tie,
Unable to find answers,
He lay in his bed,
For the final time,
The fridge glared,
For a final time,
And the smallest spark of creativity,
Sat in the now perpetually
Untouched
Cupboard,
Covered in dust.
