How can it possibly be almost Easter, already?
High time, then, for a quick update on my work mentoring young poets in schools…
My Didcot Girls’ Young Writers’ Group on zoom has been an absolute delight and a safe, creative haven for our talented students. Our Poet Laureates have also been going from strength to strength. I believe with assurance that these testing times have produced some of the best writing I’ve ever seen from young writers, in my four years to date, in my role as Patron of Writing.
“You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”
– Mary Tyler Moore
There’s so much truth in this! Adversity is hard to experience, hard to overcome, but it can build us into who we are, and, for those of us who have writing at our core, writing our way through adversity brings hope, stamina and some light. Making something beautiful out of something dire is pretty motivational!
So at this point, I’m going to demonstrate the above, by letting the young writers do the talking. Here are some brief snippets of a few of their draft poems, written over the past three months. And I think they prove my point!
Elaine Baker - Poet 