
Students Win National Poetry Day Creative Writing Competition
Exeter College’s English Literature teachers organised an internal poetry competition to mark this year’s National Poetry Day. The competition was open to all students, and received submissions from learners in a range of faculties.
Read the three winning entries:
1st place
BOOM – Lucy Howden
I’m playing with my toy soldiers, parachutes, and guns,
Storming the pillow fort, up on the bed.
They have the high ground,
But I’ve got my imagination.
BANG
Windows rattle
As my army charges forward.
No one can beat my unicorn cavalry!
CRASH
What was that?
A book falls off my shelf.
It has to be the pillow enemy, throwing a grenade to slow me down!
But it’s okay, I’ll defuse it with my blanket.
There, all safe now.
My soldiers are now inching forward for a surprise attack then…
SCREAMS
Where are they coming from?
Are they okay?
It must be… the war cries of my soldiers.
They’ve jumped out of their hiding places!
And the pillow army have surrendered just like that.
I won!
“It’s all good now, everyone’s safe now, no one’s hurt” I tell them,
Because right now I can control the entire world inside my room.
BOOM
Was that louder than before?
Does that mean it’s getting closer?
Maybe it was…
Maybe it was my toys staging a rebellion?
BOOM
I should hide in my new pillow fort.
Just in case.
I’ve got my toy soldiers to protect me.
BOOM
As long as I’m playing with them
I’m in control.
As long as I’m playing with them
The real ones can’t get to me.
2nd place
Thus another year has passed us by – Abel Fisher-Cavell
Thus another year has passed us by,
An endless loop of dusk and day,
Onwards, as the final act grows ever nigh.
In the lea I sit and dream, mesmerised by the wine-coloured sky,
With my friends, we whittle the weeks away.
Thus another year has passed us by.
But all of a sudden into my head a thought does pry
That our dialogue is all pre-written; elaborate theatre is at play,
Onwards, as the final act grows ever nigh.
In rumours, deified, star-studded Fates shall roll the dreadful die,
Senselessly, the faceless are stripped and shall with their lives pay.
Thus another year has passed us by.
While in the heavens, actors bask in election-honor, others can but comply
In hope that His humor may be kind, they pray,
Onwards, as the final act grows ever nigh.
All at once, a frightful truth devours the barren coal mines: that this play is rigged and dry,
And hence its sense is yours to bring; a patchwork of nostalgic love, someday.
Thus another year has passed us by,
Onwards, as the final act grows ever nigh.
3rd place
PLAY. – Cecily Fox
My hair is not yours to toy with,
Not yours to
Cut and style and
Not yours to admire. My hands
Were not made for worshipping you,
my bones do not ache
for your touch.
My lips do not long for yours, and if they did
Then I would paint them red until they
forgot the taste of
Vigour and violence. My eyes are not
For holding your gaze, your glare. My look
Of adoration
Is gone.
It has no grave and
Among the ruins of sandcastles, sieged,
There is a whisper of resentment. You cannot
Play with what is broken.