Rebecca's 'brilliant' prize-winning lockdown poem offers hope

A Ripon Grammar School student has won praise from a distinguished professor for a ‘brilliant’ poem she wrote in lockdown, which he says offers a hopeful message for all time.

In her prize-winning work, An Epidemic of Emotions, Rebecca Edwards describes how she felt as a GCSE student, when exams were cancelled and the country went into lockdown.

Dr Paul Hullah, professor of poetry at Tokyo’s Meiji Gakuin University, described Rebecca’s work as magical and masterful, containing spectacularly original images which are both shocking and real.

“Let’s write ourself out of these scary and strangest of times,” he said.

Her poem was selected from a particularly strong field of student entries as the winner of this year’s RGS Hullah Poetry Trophy competition, which has been running since 2014.

RGS parent Dorothy Wood won the community section award with her moving entry, My Journey’s a Day, about ageing.

“It made me cry. When poems do that, you know they’ve struck a chord. All the chords struck here are plangent, poignant, and greatly inspirational,” said Dr Hullah.

With the theme of this year’s competition being A Time of Gifts, Rebecca, 16, from Ripon, explained how her poem captured how she felt in lockdown: “I felt quite pointless after our exams were cancelled. After years of work and preparation we were being sent home empty handed.”

While the daily routine of being cooped up at home was dull and repetitive, she says she was heartened by acts of kindness, such as the clapping for carers and small gifts and messages from friends and family: “My friends and my community went above and beyond. I will be eternally grateful for the love and support of my friends and family at that time.”

Studying English literature, design technology, physics and maths at A-level, she hopes to become a graphic designer but has enjoyed creative writing since primary school: “I have always enjoyed playing with words and building mini-stories.”

Past pupil Mrs Wood, from Burton Leonard, whose three older children all attended RGS, where daughter Catherine is in Year 11, says she fondly remembers her old English teacher Mrs Carrick as inspirational.

The former accountant, who now runs a gymnastics club, says witnessing the sad decline of a relative suffering from the dehumanising and painful condition of Alzheimer’s informed her poem.

“I was particularly inspired by the precious, fleeting moments when we glimpse the strong and capable person the sufferer once was, and still is somewhere deep within.”

Student Oliver Callaghan was runner up with his poem A Time of Gifts while Aimee Childs and Caitlin McKeag poems were highly commended.

Former RGS student and acclaimed poet and author Dr Hullah praised the high standard of all entries and said everyone deserved an award: “There were so many excellent poems this year, congratulations to all who entered.”

Oliver, 14, from Masham, said he wrote about his mixed feelings in quarantine in his poem, which Dr Hullah said showed a deft and skilful grasp of rhetoric beyond his years.

Aimee, 15, from Ripon, who enjoys creative writing, explained her poem, 1928, which Dr Hullah praised for its poignant irony and subtle subversive rhyming, was inspired by a news article about women winning the right to vote.

Caitlin, 14, from near Grewelthorpe, who wants to work in the film industry, says her poem, which Dr Hullah described as showing great promise, was inspired by the dystopian novels she reads.

In the community section, Alicia Hayden, Liam Connolly and Roslyn Swaney were all highly commended, with Fumiko Hanaoka named runner up.

Read Dr Hullah’s feedback on the winning poems, as well as the winning entries, below:

WINNER: An Epidemic of Emotions by REBECCA EDWARDS

“It’s like a symphony. This magical, masterful poem starts conversationally. It seems like it needs pruning. But it doesn’t. Rather, it suddenly takes off into a dimension that transcends the present and offers us a hopeful message for all time. It is a WONDERFUL poem.

If it had just been the mid-section -
Realisation hit like an anchor smashing into the side of a hull.
The sound of tearing metal, unyielding shrieks and teeth dragging against rocks
Formed an echo-chamber in my head.
It was as if someone took my future in hand and shook it like a cocktail,
Tattered plans crumpled up like paper and tossed over fate’s shoulder.
False dawns broke day after day without spreading an inch of light. - it would have won by a country mile. These are spectacularly original, jagged ‘modernist’ images, as shocking as they are ‘real’ for us today.

And the ending -
We filled the road’s silence with our own rapturous singing.
We waved over fences and clapped with saucepans.
True, we had no silence, or clarity, but we had each other,
And, we had hope. - is brilliant. Who wouldn’t cry at something as honest and mature and HOPEFUL as that?”

RUNNER UP: “OLIVER CALLAGHAN - a truly promising poet with a deft and skilful grasp of rhetoric beyond his years. Brilliant Eliotian opening line (Prufrockian). The least cliched, and the person I felt just being his/herself; not trying to write like anyone else or like anyone ‘should’ BUT, his final line is weak: the image is nice, but Stirling is a Scottish city, not a currency. Poets had better be precise (pedantic even) in language, or else what’s the point?”

Highly Commended: “1928, by AIMEE CHILDS: its pleasing poignant irony and subtle subversive rhyming.”Highly Commended: “A Time of Gifts, by CAITLIN MCKEAG: painterly and showing great promise. This woman will be a tremendous poet if she wants to be.”

Category Two: Staff, Old Rips, inhabitants of Ripon and friends of the school

WINNER: “My Journey’s a Day by DOROTHY WOOD - incredibly moving, at times ‘symboliste’ portrayal of ageing. It made me cry. When poems do that, you know they’ve struck a chord. All the chords struck here are plangent, poignant, and greatly inspirational.”

RUNNER UP: “FUMIKO HANAOKA - an agile and inventive haiku sequence, innovative but firmly within tradition.”

Highly Commended: “Paddling, by ALICIA HAYDEN - Stevie Smith influence, and all the better for it. Paddling is brimful of pregnant simplicities, flawlessly capturing the Wordsworthian emphasis on the importance of youthful experiences and how they shape and stay with us. Beautiful.”

Highly Commended: “Drawn, by LIAM CONNOLLY - ‘I am what you allow’ wins the prize for best line of the year (decade?), a measured hiatus of ‘realness’ in an otherwise mysterious and captivating poem. I love it.”

Highly Commended: “Ripon Sanctuary Way, by ROSLYN SWANEY - now here is professional poetry at work. It’s almost TOO good. It’s early Romantic: locates and makes much of the poetry in ‘ordinary’ language. It’s a lovely poem, redolent with love for the city that bore it.”

*You can read the prize-winning poems, below:

STUDENT CATEGORY

An Epidemic of Emotions by Rebecca Edwards

It was only a few months ago, yet it feels like a lifetime

That we heard, and what was meant to be the end of an era

Was just the start of one.

Exam dates were being passed out like party invitations

That no-one really wanted to go to.

Yet, as we settled into contentment, the news struck,

And all around there was,

Silence.

Confusion, small glances, minute fidgets, but mainly

Silence.

Dazed, we were sent our separate ways,

with a meagre handful of plans out of the bucket promised to us.

We hibernated for seemingly years in what once were our nests but now our cages,

Numbers were spurted day after day while barely anything seemed to change.

It was all a surreal, fast paced dream,

that had been drawn out to a dizzying slowness.

Realisation hit like an anchor smashing into the side of a hull.

The sound of tearing metal, unyielding shrieks and teeth dragging against rocks

Formed an echo-chamber in my head.

It was as if someone took my future in hand and shook it like a cocktail,

Tattered plans crumpled up like paper and tossed over fate’s shoulder.

False dawns broke day after day without spreading an inch of light.

Yet, amidst the discord and darkness, warmth still bled into my life.

I was ambushed with love from all directions,

Calls, messages, video chats and more to bolster a smile out of me.

Each care package and letter brightened up my dismal days,

Tracing streaks of light around my solitary heart.

While numbers were babbled, we brewed our own soups.

We filled the road’s silence with our own rapturous singing.

We waved over fences and clapped with saucepans.

True, we had no silence, or clarity, but we had each other,

And, we had hope.

A Time of Gifts by Oliver Callaghan

Winter trees look like necrotising lungs,

Sweet bird calls cease to a halt.

Decrepit houses sing a mournful chant,

While shattered bodies are put into piles.

Brains turned in knots at the dark reality,

But no one can help as many urge us to stay.

The hours sat down turn into days,

Collecting frostbite and decay.

Men finally released from cabinet doors,

Run free while still being chained to stone.

Social stance waxes and wanes,

As the pound Stirling dives like a falcon.

1928 by Aimee Childs

The year of a new beginning,

Women all over are joyous, fulfilled, winning.

The silent bells of satisfaction ring,

‘A wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim’.

Finally they scream, finally we are free,

No more need to beg, no more need to plea.

The suffragettes have won, women can vote,

‘I would rather be a rebel than a slave’ Pankhurst wrote.

It has been a long time coming and is well deserved,

No woman should be treated differently is what the whole world heard.

Equality in Britain? You would think so,

Nearly one hundred years later, and still a long way to go.

A Time of Gifts by Caitlin McKeag

There was a time of gifts,

Sometime in the past.

But now it’s gone,

Replaced by black and shards of shattered song.

The world’s gone dark,

A soulless black.

No green or blue in life,

Now it’s covered in those greys-

The greys that are the miles of scattered ash.

The world, it’s gone insane,

No hope of what remains.

The buildings crumble, topple and fall,

But they’re void of life

And now nothing’s standing tall.

The world, it’s broken,

We’ve lost both our wings

And what was once a time of gifts,

Is now a time of pain.

COMMUNITY CATEGORY

My Journey’s a Day by Dorothy Wood (RGS parent)

My Journey’s a day. Day after day.

Now I am slow, the journey’s so fast.

A tilted head and ‘did you sleep well?’

Has she a clue of this unexpressed hell?

Wheeled out for some air

Like a bag in a chair

Then, alluring yet innocent,

a rose fills the air,

and I am there.

Swirling and twirling as the scent fills my nose

dancing with the girls on the tips of their toes,

My legs strong and supple….

And then it is gone,

the morphine pumps on

‘nice buttered scone my love, or a cake?

Just let me know with a nod or a shake’

Momentary Musings in haiku by Fumiko Hanaoka- grandparent of current pupil

-New Year’s Day-

Beyond the ocean of clouds

New Year’s sunlight

Emerging supernally

(雲海の　果てに初日の　神のごと）

-spring-

Dandelion, the Dansharist* (*minimalist)

A fluff with one seed

Has set off on a journey

(断捨離や　たんぽぽの絮　旅立ちぬ)

-early summer-

Sunbeams through verdure

Boy’s arm cast taken off

Reluctant farewell to his exuvia

（若葉萌ゆ　外れしギプス　惜しむ孫）

-autumn-

‘Cook ‘em today’, came my friend

Holding them like her baby

Bruised apples from her garden

(今日煮てと　友抱き来るや　傷林檎)

-winter-

Dusk descending

A time of gifts of paper cut art

Bare trees in a row

(黄昏や　切り絵となりぬ　枯木立）

Paddling by Alicia Hayden (past pupil)

Yellow boots, and a mackintosh;

With a hood slightly too big,

and sleeves slightly too short –

Her prized possession.

And then it rains.

The delight on her face,

As she peeps out from under her hood

and sees the building puddles.

It is her time.

And like a duck to water,

she runs from the house – and jumps…

Paddling has never been a toddler’s thing.

Page Break

Drawnby Liam Connolly (past pupil)

How wrong I was, to claim myself a “thrall”

of circumstance, when still enthralled with you.

If I am bound, if I'm ensnared at all,

it's by the sharps and curves afforded by my muse-

it's by your artful pinch of witty lips

and that inflection of a pencilled brow,

sketched affection, raised to trip the beat that skips.

It draws me. I am what you allow.

And I entreat that there won't come a day

when others etch my heart: sur-rendered love;

for I'll know first you bade me walk away,

and I am less the man you're worthy of.

But to be yours? To merit your regard?

I am the dust that flares when it is captured by the stars.

Ripon Sanctuary Way by Roslyn Swaney

Haloed by eight ancient stones,

creating a city of sanctuary

around its celestial cathedral,

(when viewed from Gallows Hill),

Ripon has preserved a medieval core,

built above Wilfrid’s 1400-year-old crypt.

The city expanded slowly between its rivers

from the monolithic limestone cathedral,

via evocative street names -

Kirkgate, to Old Market Square

High St Agnesgate to Bondgate

Water Skellgate and Fishergate

Allhallowgate and Blossomgate.

Follow St Mary’s Gate past Priest’s Lane

to Stonebridgegate and Magdalen’s Road

and you reach The Leper Chapel – that’s medieval!

There’s ‘Bedern’ Bank - Anglo Saxon for prayer hall,

while ‘Finkle’ is Old Norse for corner or bend,

and Heckler is 15thC Middle Dutch for teasing flax fibres!

Three rivers nourish the city.

The Ure, the Laver and the Skell,

forming water meadows, which flood regularly

and steep banks with age-old oaks and willows,

under planted with wild garlic and bluebells,

cow parsley and sweet rocket.

Nature’s garden in springtime and

available to all via public footpaths.

Viewed from the ruins of Fountains Abbey

the city disappears but the cathedral remains.

A hallowed place, which has endured since 672,

along with many traces of the past.

Linked by Kirkgate to the Market Place

and John Aislabie’s obelisk.

Watched over by the Wakeman

and the citizens of the venerable city.