Imogen Lycett-Green: The Poem Inside

The Poem Inside

 

Going to the Dentist

Starting to tap on my teeth

With a silver metal spoon

Look at each of my teeth

Like a teacher looking at her class

I can’t move, sitting perfectly still

While he stands there

Holding a tiny little drill.

 

Maryan, Argyle school, 5Q

 

This poem was written for Track Record, a community project in Camden, supported by HighSpeed1. Maryan was one of 120 Y5 pupils who participated in six class workshops over six months, delivered by the truly inspiring poet for kids, Paul Lyalls. In July last year, at the project’s closing ceremony, Maryan (10) stood up and read her poem out on a stage at St Pancras International station. In front of friends and strangers – including passers-by who paused to listen under the sky blue railway shed, sitting on suitcases – Maryan’s tiny voice told a story. Maryan had never read a poem out loud before, let alone written one. English is not her first language, yet she finds herself in the UK education system, at a school where over 30 languages are spoken, trying to communicate in a foreign tongue. Through the simple act of writing a poem, she finds her voice.

 

My Cousin’s First Steps

A very wobbly first step.

Like a loose tooth in a happy smile.

Everyone in the room watches with excitement.

Staring at this small foot.

He walks, he falls over.

 

Nasif, Richard Cobden School, 5L

 

Nasif has a little cousin. ‘Everyone in the room’ does not necessarily speak English. Yet here is Nasif, aged ten, painting pictures in our hearts of his toddler cousin taking precarious first steps in front of an audience. Nasif’s classmates cheered as he stood up to read. They waited, while he too, like the toddler, faltered. But Nasif did not fall over. His poem flew to the rafters to a volley of whoops and cheers. Toot toot went the train, ready to leave the station. Toot toot!

Track Record is in its second year now. The fantastic Paul Lyalls is at it again. This time he has signed up a third school. Track Record is a simple project; we don’t even have a website – though we are thinking about that. We publish a booklet of their poems for the kids to take home, and over 30 poems are printed onto boards at St Pancras, to the delight of the thousands of commuters and tourists who pass through the station daily. The poems stay up all summer. The dream is to expand the project, school by school, year by year.

How many times have you rummaged through that old box in the attic to find a scrap of a picture of a house you drew when you were eight? A story you wrote about dinosaurs when you were nine? Perhaps, like Nasif and Maryan, you wrote a poem when you were ten. Think about what that means to you now.

Connecting with the imagination, seeing life with fresh perspective, celebrating the everyday – these are life skills which lead not only to improved literacy, but an invaluable  sense of oneself in the world which can last a lifetime. It’s pure magic, not rocket science (though, according to some of the young poets on the project, who wrote about racing to the moon, it can be that too!) As adults working in the children’s poetry sector, all we have to do is open the door. We can do that on small budgets, with scant resources. We only need to use our own imaginations to think of new ways of ensuring every child finds their poem inside.

Imogen Lycett-Green

Imogen Lycett Green is an independent arts producer, working on community projects across the poetry sector. Formerly director of the Betjeman Poetry Prize, Imogen judges the Chiddingstone Castle Literary Festival Short Story Prize for children. She is co-founder of the Narrative Medicine programme at the Brighton Health & Wellbeing centre where she runs poetry workshops for doctors as well as adults with chronic illness.