The London Club sponsors the school’s ‘Prize For An English Poem’ at the  annual prize-giving ceremony.

This Year’s Winner – Hannah McLaughlin

Apple Tree

March’s air pricks the moon
of my shoulder blade,
grazes the dip of my hip.

Like a small child, restless
to show me that lilies have opened,
the sun prods me awake.

I pry sleep from my eyes. In my garden,
a neighbour’s cat yawns in sunlight patches.
They say Spring is a time of rebirth.

One Spring, my milky shoulders sandwiched
between them, Mum and Dad told me.
They said they’d caught it early enough.

April crashed into August. My sundress crumpled.
Tiny prayers fell at the foot of her hospital bed.
Me and Dad twirled spaghetti alone at dinner.

Now, ribbons of yellow dance between
the gaps in my curtains and wake me up
Mum’s out on a run.

My apple tree sheds little mottled bullets,
leaving tender flesh to ripen.
Snippets of green rain feed its roots.

2023 Winner – Kate McGovern

Hiding in the Woods
by Kate McGovern

Hope hides in the woods,
watching, patient and frozen,
sensing all the flurry around it.
A clear glade in the dense forest

guiding you from doubt.
Delicate and fleeting,
it is a tawny-antlered myth
saved for unsure days.

It comes by way of a flicker –
a candle sparked in your head.
The reminder from a doe’s eyes:
It can’t be over yet.

2022 Winner – Audrey Slevin

Rector Pauline Walker reports – “Our staff couldn’t choose just one of her poems hence the two. Outstanding for someone only in S2.”

Forgotten by Audrey Slevin (2P1)

I am a blowing and battered trampoline,

forgotten like an adult’s imagination

but not gone.

I am a trampoline with strong metal arms

and a bouncing brain. I am battered

from strong winds.

I sway and creak, yet you still forget me.

I am a trampoline, with a spring

to my step.

a creek to my voice, a watching gaze

as you grow and grow. And yet

still you forget me.

Where I’m From

I come from a Scottish village loud and proud

I come from a split life of mother and father

I come from long nights of words

I come from watching for hawks and birds

I come from the dripping sound of rain

I come from the little shops down the lane

I come from parties into the night

I come from shouting anger and fights

I come from letters, paper and pen

I come from Regina, Aurora and albums

I come from long hours of tears, tears, gentle tears.

2021 Winner

Paulina Bysiak’s poem has won the year RHS Club (London) Prize for an English Poem. Paulina’s poem seems somehow very appropriate for 2020-21 because she takes us into a nightmarish world that we would all want to forget !

Coldness by Paulina Bysiak S6

Like a ray of light,
the coldness went through the cracks in the doors.
It filled the room once again, with the biting air and frost on the floor.
I am inside of it, trying to gather anything that would give me warmth.
But all of clothes and blankets were burned already, an evidence of my earlier weakness,
that left me in the thin material that’s full of clothes, covering me but not protecting from the cold.

I wish for warmth to melt the snow and ice,
to set me free from this never ending nightmare,
but with each day it gets worse.

The cabin starts to breakdown,
walls start to loosen and I cannot do anything to prevent it.
Laying on the frost covered floor, that I did not move from for years,
I lose all of my remaining brightness and warmth.

Friends, where have you gone?
You know I’m here, dying over and over again, yet none of you came for me
Why would you leave me here, knowing the terror of this place, leaving me for some off place,
that I could never reach?

The thoughts circle,
heart freezes, mind fills with hate,
just as the snow begins to melt.

2020 Winner

As you may have seen in the You Tube video of the school’s virtual prize-giving the winner of the RHS London Club prize for an English poem for 2020 was Euan Coull with his poem The hesitant silence before ”I love you too” . Euan takes us into a world of coffee bars, late night phone calls and hand-rolled cigarettes so hang on to your hats ! Euan was one of the school vice-captains who attended the London dinner in March 2020 but he didn’t confide that he was a budding poet. Our thanks are due to Pauline Walker who forwarded-on the winning poem.

The Hesitant Silence Before “I Love You Too”

You grew flowers in my lungs and I

Can’t breathe, but darling, they’re so

Beautiful I can’t bring myself to care –

I’ll take the suffocation with a smile.

I know I’m just starry eyed from

The constellation of freckles on your shoulder

but couldn’t you let me stargaze for a while longer?

My phone sleeps beside me, the perfect accomplice in my crime.

It’s too easy to call you, ask you to drag me to slumber,

With your 3 a.m. drawl, or instead ask you to not let me sleep,

But to make moonlit promises that burn to ash in the sun.

Promises we make no mention of the next day,

Lost in the translation of sunset to sunrise.

We can chalk this up to a mistake over an Americano, no sugar,

And we’d be heartbreakingly correct,

But why don’t we do it anyway,

See how many we can make in one night.

Smoke me like your hand-rolled cigarettes.

And I’ll make myself believe it’s your love warming me, and not

A flame

2019 Winner

Thanks to Pauline Walker, who has kindly sent us a copy of Jack Crummey’s poem ‘Making Raspberry Jam with Mum’ which was the winner of the London Club’s 2019 prize for an English Poem – we are sure you will enjoy reading it.

Making Raspberry Jam with Mum

I catch my mum taking sneaking bites
of raspberries we’ve picked, carried home by car.
Our dishwasher’s stacked with motley jars;
mustard and mayonnaise (though no marmite).

Scales struggle, strain under mounds of sugar.
My wooden spoon crushes fruit. Juices flow.
Mum says, ‘keep stirring, Jack, don’t be so slow!’
I swirl berries in vats on the cooker.

She curls the ribbons; gold, silver and red,
glues tartan tops to saved-up golden tops.
I haul and heave the juice, don’t stop
till Mum’s scald-proof hands take over instead.

Sugar spits and froths, we remove the scum.
The jam’s poured, cooled, to be enjoyed with mum.

Jack Crummey

2018 Winner

The 2018 winner, Tom Campbell’s poem ‘Roses’ is published below.

Roses

I often found my grandfather in his garden.
Bent low, with bare arms and hands blackened by peat
He turned the earth
and planted seeds
in straight rivets that sunk there.

I loved to watch
as he wrenched up carrots and twisted cabbage heads and
Sprung spring onions loose.
Dusty potatoes he would snap and toss to me,
‘Take them in son,
I’ll help you wash them for dinner.’

In the shade and evening breeze
he shuffled through his greenhouse.
I heard the easy sprinkle
until his can ran empty
and he could no longer see green
in the dark.

He came back through the garden
towards the house
Stopped and rubbed his knees
and squeezed stiff hands.
But grinned when I opened the door.

At noon,
He pruned and shaped his rose bushes.
Snipped off stems and
dead – headed rotting blooms
To make room for new buds.

One day, work complete,
he stood, roses strewn around his feet,
on the red pavestones
scorched by summer.
When I ran to him,
Barefoot,
I thorned myself.
His garden dripped
The salty sweat of blood and tears.

Grandad set down his secateurs
and twine
And took me in.
To clean dry my wound
and tape it shut.

In the morning
I saw
He had clipped his roses back to stalks
and dug them up.

His back has given in now
He’ll plant no more, he says,
Knees can only kneel at Mass.
In the kitchen
Hands, laced with thick veins like blue rope,
Shake as they pour my tea.

We look out to his garden
Where my cousins play games
and chase the dog
in Autumn’s leaves.
Grandad shakes his head and
Smiles.

Settled in his chair,
He sits until a wind kicks up cold
and the kids come in
And the moon comes over the hedge
As the last sunbeams tend to his garden.

Tom Campbell

2017 Winner

The 2017 winner, Emma Sunter’s poem ‘I can’t think of not knowing you’ is published below.

Thanks to Val Peay for getting hold of Emma’s poem via the Rector Pauline Walker.

I can’t think of not knowing you

I thought you’d be a puppy,

But no, after nine months, a baby sister.

I called you Googs: you couldn’t speak.

Your hand wrapped round my little finger.

Driving home from Grandma’s house –

Close knit in popcorn seats with blanket knees

Twinkle, twinkle ombre sky –

You sang yourself to sleep.

We saw the world from treetops

Ran through icing sugar rain.

Raincoats, yellow mustard seed.

Our faith could move a mountain

Enough girls can do their hair

But you can run and leap and do hard sums.

You are constant finger tapping irritation

But music flows from you like rays of sun.

Bus tickets and sweet wrappers

You’re in those scraps of paper,

Ich kenne du wie meine Wesentasche,

I can’t move for you being there.

But this September, no more

Cereal in mutual weariness

I can’t bring your forgotten cello up the hill,

You can’t laugh when I’m too serious.

You’ll be sleeping in my raincoat pocket

Blanketed in my runny noses

Shielded by my loose change

I’ll tread lightly and not wake you.

I’ll need you more than pockets

I’ll stuff tissues up my sleeves

And coins in my shoes, to be

Close to you.