Five poems

	Songs of Sacred Places, with an introduction by Blake Morrison, contains 84 poems recording the amazing insights of schoolchildren, aged from 6 to 16, about their own sacred places. (available from our book section)

From the Sacred Places Writing Competition

A Little Prayerful Place

A little prayerful place
Where Mary is carved
With Jesus in her arms.
A dark smell of candle smoke

By Sam Addison, aged 7, St Mary’s Primary School, Knaresborough

There is a Gloomy Place

There is a gloomy place,
Silent, dim and dirty.
Holy, cold with candle wax
Terrible, rough and dusty rocks.

Small but solid and lonely,
I went to visit it once.
As I went inside
I saw Mary and her Son.

One step after another
I began to like its gentle sounds.
I stepped up on the altar
And began to pray,
When I went to that place.

By Phillipa Batt, aged 7, St Mary’s Primary School, Knaresborough

I Stand All On My Own

I stand all on my own
Cold in winter, hot in summer
Watching people rushing,
Building churches, fighting,
Dying in the wars
People are buried under my roots
I am old,
3,000 years old
Old, wrinkled and wise…

by Connor Porter, aged 6, Stawley Primary School, Ashbrittle

We Looked

We looked and smelt
It was a special place.
A quiet place.
We took our shoes off our feet.
Why?
So that we could be quiet.

by Charlene Sullivan, Shelley Special School, Kennington

My Sacred Place

Nobody has got my brain
Nobody has got my ideas
Nobody feels like me
Nobody has got thoughts like me
Nobody has got pictures like me
Nobody has words like me
Nobody has my dreams
That is why my brain is my sacred place.

by Sana Ahmad, aged 10, Rushey Mead Primary School, Leicester

To get a copy of Songs of Sacred Places go to our book section