About the poems
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One of several posters illustrating the sacred,
produced by children at Rushey Mead School in
Leicester
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by Jill Pirrie
(Advisor to the Sacred
Places Writing Competition)
‘Nobody has words like me Nobody has my
dreams’
Thus wrote ten-year old Sana Ahmad. The
distinctive words and dreams in this collection capture
a spirit of place as elusive as it is familiar, as
personal as it is tribal.
Whether writing
about an ancient yew, a holy shrine, or simply about
their own special place, these young poets have much to
teach us. Eleven-year old Livvy Hanks’s lines:
‘The young people live too swiftly to remember
secrets, But the bold knight holds them
all.’
are cautionary; they arrest the headlong
pace of our everyday present to return us to the
beginnings which are the wellspring of collective wisdom
and personal grace.
Even more importantly,
many poems express an unconditional affection for earth.
When seven-year old Tabitha King compiles her litany of
‘I love you’s for the ancient yew, she articulates the
primal urge to engage with our wilderness past. In so
many ways this Millennium project has been a coming
home. From that sure foundation, the future looks as
bright as these poems.
Read five of the poems
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