Little Laureates.

Young Writers is the young people’s publishing imprint of Forward Press - The People’s Publisher.
Established in 1991, Young Writers has promoted poetry and creative writing within schools for the past 15 years by running annual nationwide competitions. Each competition results in the publication of a collection of regional anthologies showcasing the work of today’s schoolchildren. The British Library has over a decade of Young Writers collections in its national archive!

And my Grandson Mark has a poem in this latest publication “Little Laureates”. It’s a poem about death, morbid I know but they were given a list of subjects they could write about and Markey chose death as the best in the list. I’m not quite sure what the other subjects were about, but rest assured, if he chose death then they must have been boring.

This is the poem:

Death feels like dark beetles and caterpillars and spiders.
Death is like burning, blazing pieces of flames eating up your life.
Death tastes like dark pools of blood.
Death feels like fire burning your heart.
Death looks like a blazing fire burning down a forest.
Death smells like a dead wombat that’s left its excrement.

Mark aged 9.

Hmmm makes a change from Angels, harps and fluffy white clouds doesn’t it? Now if you are as alarmed after reading this as I was, then don’t be. Apparently according to a psychiatrist friend of mine (Well he said he was my friend) Male children almost always turn to the dark side of things to explain the strange and abstract. Where as the female child will for the most part look to the light for inspiration.

I have read the book and found similar types of poems by boys and lovely fluffy poems by girls, so the content bears this out. What I want to know is at what point during his young life did he come across some dead Wombat shit.

Well done Mark.