Jasmine Burgess, prize-winner at the John Betjeman Poetry Competition for Young People 2013


Jasmine, aged 12, was a runner-up at the John Betjeman Poetry Competition for Young People 2013, with her fantastic poem Primary. She did brilliantly well to get into the final: one of just three people out of over 2,000 entrants.

Here is her poem, followed by some photos of the awards ceremony, held at St Pancras Station on 3rd October 2013 in front of the statue of Sir John Betjeman, who helped to save the station from demolition.




Primary

Is there a place for you
so close your finger could touch it —
but then you pull back, burnt
and walk away, as the world blurs.
Like my Primary School?

Sometimes, instinctively, I try to spot my friends
— the ones who left with me — still
pouring from the classrooms, a mass
of messy hair and muddy jeans playing
where I once played, in the field

behind the hawthorn hedge. Sometimes
when I look though those jagged bars,
that thorny, twig-edged puzzle,
I know I laugh madly, squeal, scream —
then I remember

I'm uniformed; I'm gone.
I'm on the other side of the hedge now.
But I can still make out the dull
metallic monkey bars, stained with layer
on layer of finger prints and smudges.

I wonder if my childhood name
is still scrawled there, thin and pale
against the dark green ragged wall,
or whether it's been swept away
with the apple cores and tennis balls?

Or faded, till it's hardly there at all?
I wonder if the ghost of me
still laughs among the rest,
or if she walks with me, beside the hedge,
or if she's long been dead?
By Jasmine Burgess, age 12

You can also download an amateur video of Jasmine reading her poem (with, alas, the first few seconds missing).

The above photos and video of the awards ceremony are by Jasmine's mum.

Page created by Sushila Burgess, 12–14 October 2013.


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