Search Results for: why i write

A resource by Sarah Gibbs

Sarah Gibbs recently completed her PhD in English Literature at University College London (UCL). Her doctoral thesis examined print culture and political communication in the works of George Orwell. She is Instruction & Research Librarian at Medicine Hat College, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art (RSA).

Orwell on Kipling

[In Anglo-Indian families,] [he] was a sort of household god with whom one grew up and whom one took for granted whether one liked him or whether one did not. […] For my own part I worshipped Kipling at thirteen, loathed him at seventeen, enjoyed him at twenty, despised him at twenty-five, and now again rather admire him. George Orwell’s obituary for Rudyard Kipling, New English Weekly, 1936

It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realise […] that an empire is primarily a money-making concern. […] George Orwell, “Rudyard Kipling.” 1942

Kipling is the only English writer of our time who has added phrases to the language.
George Orwell, “Rudyard Kipling.” 1942

For anyone writing on the Raj, that is, the direct rule of India by the British Government from 1858 to 1947, Rudyard Kipling, the “unofficial poet laureate of Empire”, loomed large. George Orwell, the son of an Indian Civil Service member, who, like Kipling was born in India and had served as a British police officer in occupied Burma, was compelled to respond to his famous literary forebearer. Many scholars consider Orwell’s first novel Burmese Days (1934) a cynical riposte to Kipling’s pro-Empire writings. This resource introduces the differences, and similarities, between the authors’ colonial experiences, and the works those experiences inspired. It also examines the limits of Orwell’s anti-imperialism.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in 1865 in Mumbai (then Bombay), India, and passed what he characterised as an exceptionally happy childhood there. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was a well-respected expert in Buddhist art. Kipling considered Hindustani to be his first language. The great trauma of his young life occurred in 1871 when he was sent to England for schooling.

Kipling rejoined his parents in India at the age of seventeen and began work as a journalist for the Civil & Military Gazette. He reported for newspapers for over six years. His first book, a collection of satirical verse about official life in India entitled Departmental Ditties, was published in 1886. He returned to England in 1889 to pursue literature full-time.

Although Kipling never again lived there, his best-known works consider the British Raj. His Empire-focused novels and stories became so popular that they furnished the entirety of many people’s knowledge of India. His texts, often humorous, are characterised by Kipling’s fascination for Indian culture, fully endorsed British rule in the country.

Kipling’s masterpiece is Kim (1901), the story of Kimball O’Hara, an Irish orphan raised in the backstreets and bazaars of Lahore. The author wrote to Charles Eliot Norton in 1900:

I’ve nearly done a long leisurely Asiatic yarn in which there are hardly any Englishmen. It has been a labour of great love and I think it a bit more temperate and wise than much of my stuff.

The critics agreed. The narrative, which portrayed India under British rule as both protected and prosperous, won universal praise. Even Henry James was moved to declare in a letter to Kipling, “[T]he beauty, the quantity, the Ganges-flood leave me simply gaping as your procession passes.”

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Orwell was born in Motihari, Bengal in 1903 but, unlike Kipling, he developed no enduring early connections to India and at the age of one, he relocated to England with his mother and sister. While Kipling’s highly educated and cultured family had access to the upper echelons of society in the Raj, Orwell’s father was an official in the ignoble Opium Department, responsible for the state sanctioned drugs trade.

Though the young Orwell, then Eric Blair, was an active reader and won a scholarship to Eton, he became an indifferent student, and was not recommended for university admission. In 1922, he sailed to Burma, where he would spend five years in the Indian Imperial Police.

During his colonial service, Orwell traversed Burma, working in six different locations. His duties included overseeing ammunition and equipment stores, managing the investigation of minor crimes, supervising night patrols, and organising the local police stations and training schools. From his subsequent writings, although he never confirmed it, we can also conclude that he participated in the executions of prisoners. Orwell contracted dengue fever at his final posting and returned to England in 1927 on medical leave. While at home with his family, he resigned his commission. He wrote in “Shooting an Elephant” (1936) that his time in the police force had shown him the “dirty work of Empire at close quarters”; the experience made him a lifelong foe of imperialism.

QUESTION: Think about the difference in Orwell’s and Kipling’s personal experiences within the British Raj. Before you read, imagine how this might shape their viewpoints of Empire.

The Limits of Orwell’s Anti-Imperialism

And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. […] [W]hen the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. “Shooting an Elephant.” 1936

For five years I had been part of an oppressive system, and it had left me with a bad conscience. Innumerable remembered faces–faces of prisoners in the dock, of men waiting in the condemned cells, of subordinates I had bullied and aged peasants I had snubbed, of servants and coolies [sic] I had hit with my fist in moments of rage […] haunted me intolerably. I was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiate. The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937

Hitler is only the ghost of our own past rising against us. He stands for the extension and perpetuation of our own methods, just at the moment when we are beginning to be ashamed of them. Notes on the Way. Time and Tide, 30 March 1940

While Orwell acknowledged the unjust and exploitative character of imperialism (as seen in the quotes above), his condemnation of Britain’s Empire did not always generate in him a corresponding sympathy for indigenous peoples suffering under it. Professor Douglas Kerr, who has written extensively on Orwell’s colonial experiences and works, identifies a number of limitations to the author’s anti-imperialist attitudes.

Burmese Days is thoroughly Eurocentric, a novel of colonial life squarely centred on the experiences of an English timber merchant, John Flory, a member of a small European community in a town in Upper Burma. It rarely enters the private life or the consciousness of local people. Flory has an Asian mistress, an Asian friend, and an Asian enemy, but virtually all the novel’s action is focused through his European consciousness. (151)

In Orwell’s Empire-focused novel and essays, indigenous characters are under-developed, and peripheral to narratives of European experience. Furthermore, he notes in “Law and Race in George Orwell” (2017) that Burmese Days fails to engage with the racial hierarchies that allow John Flory, a civilian, to command Indian army officers in a moment of civil strife; the novel relies on the assumption that the white man or “sahib” will always be in control (312). According to Kerr, the text does not support imperialism, but neither does it endorse Burmese independence.

QUESTIONS FOR DEBATE AND DISCUSSION

• Can we enjoy a writer’s work if we don’t like their politics?
• How far can people ever truly step outside their experiences?
• What does it mean, as an author/writer to show solidarity/sympathise with someone elses’s experiences? What are the limitations of this?

READING & WRITING EXERCISE

• Read George Orwell’s Essay ‘Shooting An Elephant’
• Think About:
  • How the writer communicates conflicting feelings and pressures about an action
  • Have you ever felt that kind of inner conflict in a personal situation? Why? How does it manifest? What does it feel like?
  • Consider the language used within ‘Shooting an Elephant’ think about how Orwell builds a picture of place and people. Some of the way that Orwell uses language feels uncomfortable today, why?

• Writing Challenges:
  • Consider how you might write about your own experiences of internal conflict, could you portray it through the creation of a character or new scenario? Would you give your reader insight into the protagonist’s thoughts like Orwell? Or use external third person description to build a sense of conflict?

OR

• Consider how the events of “Shooting an Elephant” may have been perceived by the Burmese people, rewrite the events from this perspective

WATCH

• In 1950 Rudyard Kipling’s novel ‘Kim’ was adapted into a film. The film trailer (linked below) is a shocking time capsule of racist stereotypes and whitewashing. This trailer is difficult and uncomfortable viewing, but it raises important questions about representation and damaging colonial stereotypes.
• Watch here – Warner Brothers “Kim” Trailer (1950)
• Think about the language used within the trailer, imagine how it might impact European and American perspectives of the ‘East’ in 1950, that were then the modern states of India and Pakistan, how does it ‘other’ the location?
  • “Splendid adventure and exotic romance”
  • “Actually, filmed in its authentic location…India, sparkling jewel of the mystic orient!”
  • “The man of mystery”
  • “Turbulent empire of unbelievable magnificence”
  • “Strange land of princes and beggars”
  • “Of hard riding mountain fighters and perfumed hareem girls”
  • “Forbidding men of 100 races”
  • “The threat of wild bandits”
• Representation: Another shocking facet of this trailer is the casting of white Americans within the roles despite Kipling’s claim that his novel contained “almost no Englishmen”. What does this reveal about the way that writers works were – and still are in different ways – translated, adapted and claimed by different groups for different audiences?

FURTHER READING/WATCHING:

• Burmese Days, George Orwell (1934) – Try your local library – find out more here
• Kim, Rudyard Kipling (1901) – Try your local library
• Douglas Kerr: Orwell, Kipling, and Empire

If you’re struggling to start your entry to this year’s Orwell Youth Prize, but are keen to write something creative, poet Miriam Nash has some imaginative ways to get you started. Use Miriam’s prompts, which play with our theme ‘A New Direction: Starting Small’, to get you thinking about places you know, objects all around you and ideas you might like to see realised in new ways!

1.  How to start a story or poem by thinking about names

Warm Up: Many Names

1. Choose a person who is important to you.
2. Write down all the names that person gets called, from official names to nicknames, in any language. You can also invent names for them.

Start with a map

1. Choose a place – Think about a place you know well.
2. Draw a map – Take 5 minutes and draw a map of a place from memory. A very rough map. Only you need to understand it.
3.  Add your own place names. Instead of using official names, make names up. Name each place on your map for someone or something you think should be remembered here.

Begin your poem or story 

Here are some ways you could begin:

1. Write a ‘list poem’ that is a tribute to a person you care about, including many of their names. Tell us why their names are important.
2. Write a poem beginning with a line like, ‘I would name this street/hill/bench after…’
3. Write a story set in the place on your map in which the names you invented are the actual names of streets, trees, buildings. How do the names affect the place and its people?
4. Whose names should be remembered from 2020-2021? Write a poem or story in which a name you want to be remembered is repeated. It might be a name that not many people know.

Examples

2. How to write about something big by starting small 

Start Small

1. Write down an issue or subject that is important to you.
2. Write a list of things that come to mind when you think of that issue. The rule is: none of them can be human. They all have to be thinks you can see or touch. So they might be objects, plants, buildings…

Letter 

1. Write a letter to the thing you’ve chosen.

Reply 

1. Now write a reply. Imagine the thing is writing back to you.

These letters are the material you can use as a starting point to write a poem or story to write about a big topic.

Inspiration

Before you begin, read or listen to some poems:

Jaguar by Francisco X. Alarcón (text)

Sugar Cane by Grace Nichols (text and audio)

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner (text and video)

3. Start with a change

Choose your change

Imagine one of these changes took place in the UK:

• What if everyone in a company was paid the same, from the cleaner to the CEO?
• What if people were no longer allowed to fly to other countries?
• What if there were no exams?
• What if this country welcomed all refugees?

You can choose one of these, or think of your own.

Create some characters

1. Create two characters who live in a similar place to you. They know each other. The change has affected them in different ways.
2. For each character, write down:
   • Their age
   • What they mostly do in their life
   • Something they love
   • Something they are afraid of
   • How they know each other
   • How their daily lives have changed

Write a scene 

Write a scene where the two characters are talking about something in their life that has been affected by the change. It may be easier to write if:

• One of them is doing an activity while they talk
• One of them wants something from the other

In 2021, the Orwell Youth Prize opened up a new genre of entry: game design.

This year, we’re excited to welcome your game design entries on the 2025  theme of ‘Freedom is…’

We’re still firmly rooted in our belief in the power of great political writing, but we’re keen to allow you to express your ideas about politics and society in new forms and we think game design is a really interesting way to do that.

Perhaps you have the seed of an idea, but you’re not sure whether to build it into a short story, poem or even a game concept?

The purpose of this page is to outline why you might choose to enter the prize with a game design, and what you’ll need to think about to make your entry as strong as possible.

One of our 2023 winners, Heike Ghandi, has also made this Printable – OYP Game Design Template , OYP Game Design Examples, and  OYP Game Design Presentation to provide you with a starting point to shape your game design idea, and what opportunities game design can offer. You can use this template if it helps you, or write up your game design concept a different way – whatever works best for you!

Why game design? 

We believe that gaming is fertile ground for thinking about politics and society. We spoke in more detail about this with game designer Imre Jele, who designed ‘Orwell’s Animal Farm Game’. He explains how game design links to Orwell and politics today – and especially, how Orwell’s Animal Farm and video game design are connected through ideas around power and control.

Here are some of the games Imre mentions, which might provide some useful inspiration for your own game on the theme of ‘Freedom is…’

• Tropico puts the player in charge of an island, and ultimately building a country from scratch.
• Democracy asks in its introduction ‘Have you ever wanted to be president? Or prime minister?’ and puts players in charge of a country to make policies, laws and other actions, while trying to get re-elected.
• Orwell: Ignorance is Strength explores misinformation and disinformation – ‘Step into the shoes of a government official in a top-secret department of the Orwell surveillance program. Given the power to both uncover and fabricate “the truth”, how far will you go in the service of your country?’

Games often give their players a certain amount of freedom – to make choices which will influence the journey they take through the game. There are also constraints on players’ freedoms, in the rules of the game. How might you design a game which explores ideas about freedom? For example, in the world of your game, who or what controls freedom – a government, a dictator, technology? What kind of freedoms do characters have – or lack? How might characters in the game try to gain freedom for themselves? What might the consequences be?

Why not try designing a game concept for this year’s Prize, to explore ideas about Freedom is…?

How do I design my game?

To help you get started planning your game, one of our 2023 Orwell Youth Prize winners, Heike, has come up with this OYP Game Design Template  for you to start filling in ideas. You can use this to shape your final entry, or just to start planning – either way, the questions and prompts it includes will be useful for you to consider:

• A name for your game
• An overview or description of your game (one or two sentences)
• A sense of what your game looks like (written description of the world – three or four sentences)
• Clarity around the rules, goals, challenges and rewards within the game (three or four sentences)
• Who the characters/players in the game are – heroes and villains (three or four sentences)
• Starting position – how does the game commence? (two or three sentences)
• In-game events/tasks/conflicts/achievements/decisions/pathways (four or five sentences)
• Potential finishing outcomes/scenarios (two or three sentences)
• A description around who the audience would be/how they would feel when playing (two or three sentences)
• A clear sense of how your game responds to the theme

The ‘game concept’ genre will follow others in relation to word count (1,000 for entries from years 7-11 and 1,500 for entries from years 12-13).

How do I submit my game design entry?

Once you’re happy with your game design, you can simply upload it as a PDF document via our online form.

You are also very welcome to collaborate on your game design entry in a pair or small group. Nominate one person to submit their details in the entry form itself, and then simply email admin@theorwellyouthprize.co.uk with the details of any collaborators.

Should you have any further questions on submission, please email admin@theorwellyouthprize.co.uk

What’s different about game design?

The possibilities of storytelling and the centrality of active player experience in game design gives priority to certain types of questions:

Player Experience: Think about the type of experience you would like the player of your game to have as they make their way through your world:

• Will it teach them something about the type of society you’d like to see?
• Will it offer a new perspective and if so, what will that be?
• How will you make your point? Through positive actions or consequences?
• How would you like the player to feel at the beginning, during and at the end of the game?
• Will your game reflect the past, present or future, will it be inspired by our world or create a new one?

The consequences of decision making: Game design gives you the opportunity to portray multiple narratives. The decisions players make inform different types of outcomes and experiences. How can you use this creatively to bring your idea alive?

• Where are players aiming to get to and what (if something does) gets in their way?
• Are some outcomes good and some bad? How do you reflect this?

Feedback & Judging

As with all Orwell Youth Prize entries, if you submit before the feedback deadline, you will receive personalised feedback on your work. If you submit a game design concept your work will be reviewed by a selection of volunteers with experience in this field.

Further advice

We are very grateful for the support of BAFTA Young Game Designers award in helping to support the Youth Prize opening up to accept game design. The BAFTA Young Game Designers website (http://ygd.bafta.org/)  has further advice on how to develop a game concept, and examples of their winning pieces. Remember though, our prize is driven by ideas around politics and social justice, so make sure you align your thinking to the theme and to our focus.

With special thanks to Tom Bradstreet, Adele Richards and Brandon Cole at Into Games, Imre Jele, Bossa Studios, Sam D’Elia, BAFTA and Nick Dixon, Falmouth University

Local journalism isn’t all about traffic accidents, who got sent to prison this week or the opening of a supermarket chain. Across the country, local journalists play a key role in informing communities, holding powerful people and institutions to account and highlighting inspiring stories or voices.

YOU CAN ALSO DOWNLOAD A PRINTABLE PDF VERSION OF THIS RESOURCE HERE.

But, along with the journalism sector as a whole, it has suffered from a crisis in financial sustainability, that has led to a downturn in the quality and availability. Highlighting its importance, research has shown that good local journalism helps strengthen democracy and communities.

A positive sign is the growth of local journalism projects that are aimed at restoring trust and reaching diverse communities with a focus on quality journalism and community engagement.

The Bristol Cable is a leading example of this new movement for a better media. Launched from a living room in 2014, the Cable is 100% owned by 2,300 members (and counting) who all have an equal share. We produce award winning local journalism in print and online, free to access for all, and pioneer new methods of reaching and engaging communities, through events, training and democratic participation. Find out more here.

This resource, produced by the Bristol Cable, is designed to get you started with some key concepts and tips for creating local journalism that is exciting, engaging and hard hitting.

Types of stories:

There are different categories for journalistic work, and there is a debate on how best to categorise or label them. But broadly, much of journalism can be broken down into the following:

News reports

These will generally be factual updates on events as they unfold. However, publications will take a different tone or approach depending on their editorial leanings. For example, the Times is generally more conservative while the Guardian is generally more liberal.

Example: The council are now opposed to Bristol Airport expansion despite previous support. But what does that mean for the plans? (Bristol Cable)

Academy plan to change admissions rules could ‘displace’ kids (Liverpool Echo)

Opinion or voice piece

These pieces are written in the first person, meaning the author writes about their own experiences, thoughts and opinions about a specific topic or issue. This is often aimed at making a specific argument in the case of an opinion piece, or telling a personal and powerful story, in the case of a voice piece.

Voice example: Vulnerability, escapism and creativity, my experiences of lockdown as a young Bristolian

Opinion example: ‘We must not let Bristol’s coronavirus recovery be built on shortsighted banks, empty gestures and missed opportunities’

Features journalism

This is a catch all category for more creative and colourful writing, that encompasses interviews, essays, longer pieces with more context and multiple sections.

Example: Meet the Bristol collective putting surplus wealth in the hands of people tackling injustice

Example: Bristol filmmaker Michael Jenkins is ‘wreaking the best kind of havoc on the city’

Investigative journalism

This form of journalism is usually aimed at exposing or revealing something that isn’t already known about and that maybe controversial. This is an area that has legal and ethical risks, and demands special skills and knowledge that should only be undertaken with the support of an experienced journalist.

Example: Finally exposed: How Lopresti ice cream boss kept men in slave-like conditions, tenants and families in squalor. But people spoke out. (This series of stories was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils 2020)

‘Broken people in a broken system, Manchester’s forgotten families’, Jennifer Williams, Manchester Evening News. (This piece by Jennifer Williams, Investigations Editor at Manchester Evening News was part of a series longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils 2020)

For the Orwell Youth Prize, the best approach is an opinion, voice or feature piece where you can touch on big issues in a creative and personalised way.

So how to go about that?

Building a strong story:

Depending on what sort of story or topic you are working on, different aspects will be more or less important.

However, there are some key elements to think about and combine to make a powerful story

Local is global:

We live in a massively interconnected world, where incidents or issues happening across the globe can affect us, directly or indirectly. By using local examples of stories that help shed light on a national or global issue, we can tell stories that may feel unconnected to us in a way that brings it right back to our doorstep and can make people sit up and take notice.

For example, maybe there is a refugee family living on your street who’s experience of their homeland and now living in the UK can help tell the story of conflict, migration and Britain today. Or perhaps, someone you know is spending a lot of time on social media. How does this connect to the power and influence of global mega-corporations like Facebook or TikTok?

Examples: From St Pauls to Syria: Why this young woman and Kurds in Bristol are struggling for justice from afar

Facts + Humans are a powerful combo:

Facts are the building blocks of journalism, and making sure that the facts we publish are accurate is a crucial responsibility of a journalist. However, having a compelling human story that helps illustrates things like data and statistics is a great way to help the general public be interested and engaged.

For example, we know that thousands of people are facing eviction due to problems paying rent as a result of the coronavirus. Can you give any personal experience or speak to a tenant who is in this position?

Connecting on the emotional level really helps to bring statistics to life. Asking yourself the question ‘why should someone care?’ can help you help you not get buried information and keep to what’s important to convey the story.

Examples: ‘Most families find it shameful’ – Finding pride in a community where being gay is taboo

Context, context, context

Arguably a weakness of much of journalism is that it tells us ‘what is happening’, but not ‘why’. By exploring and explaining ‘why’ we can help the reader have a greater understanding of this sometimes bewildering world we live in! One technique is to delve back further into the past to help explain an event or development by looking at the factors or history of the issue.
Obviously it’s important to acknowledge that there’s often different views or opinions on why something is happening. Make sure to be clear when an opinion is being stated (including your own!), rather than an agreed fact.

Examples: Vox Explainers

Dig deeper

One of the first places a journalist will begin research is through a search engine like Google, an amazingly powerful tool. However, often the top results are news articles. Try digging a bit deeper by researching the sources, people and information cited in the news to get some more detail and a better feel for the topic. It can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming because of how much information is out there, but try to organise your notes in a document, and save links you want to follow up later on. It’s all part of getting immersed in a topic!

Examples: ‘Bristol Water is trying to hike your bills and ‘tip the scales in investors’ favour’

And finally, it’s not all doom and gloom

There’s an old saying in journalism that “if it bleeds, it leads”, meaning that news organisations put the grimmest stories front and centre. No doubt, it’s necessary to highlight the bad and the ugly around us, but this can often lead to sensationalist headlines designed to anger and shock people. However, there is growing evidence that a constant barrage of negative news is prompting people to switch off and disengage with what’s happening all together. As a response there is an emerging trend of ‘solutions journalism’ that explores and highlights campaigns, technological breakthroughs, inspiring community projects and big ideas that can help us both understand and begin to address the challenges we all face.

Examples: Big ideas of what a good ‘new normal’ could look like after coronavirus
See more solutions journalism here and here.

Things to think about:

Privacy, people’s stories and the ‘right to reply’

Journalists have the right to ask questions and approach people to speak to them. However, individuals, particularly in private situations or regarding sensitive matters, also have the right to decline to speak. It’s important to respect people’s privacy and ask for consent to interview them, for example.

A journalist should be independent of people they interview. But at the same time, if you are telling other people’s intimate stories, check in with them about what elements you are going to focus on and seek their feedback. Remember that you are the author, but also that you should be sensitive to their concerns.

Different rules apply if you are making a factual allegation against someone or a company, for example. You must give them the opportunity to respond to the allegations, in what is known as a ‘right of reply’. However for the purposes of the Orwell Youth Prize you should steer clear of stories that may raise these complicated editorial and legal issues without the advice of an experienced journalist.

Fake news:

As the saying goes: “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” While not all fake or inaccurate news is spread maliciously, it can be hard to spot and may be shared in your social circles. A key skill of a journalist is to question things, so if you see something online or IRL, you can do your own research to work out if it’s accurate.

Some resources for fact checking and fake news:

• Full Fact
• BBC Help Your Students Spot False News

Headlines:

‘You’ll never guess what this chimpanzee does next?!” is a classic example of a clickbait headline. Though the chimpanzee probably does something amazing, headlines should aim to give the reader an idea of what they are looking at, while at the same time enticing them to read your piece. It can be a tricky balance, is a question of style and is an art in itself. You can test out different versions with people you know. What would make them click on the link or read the story?

• Tips for headlines

Getting started:

Now you have a better understanding about concepts and top tips for journalism, you’re ready to get started. Think about the following questions as a checklist:

• What is the big issue or topic that I’m thinking about?
• What original or interesting perspective or ‘angle’ can I give?
• What information do I need to gather or people do I need to speak to?
• What sort of story-type will I go for?
• What is the deadline and word count?

Glossary:

Explanations of some of the trickier terms within this resource:

Financial sustainability: The ability to be financially stable and continue to cover costs and invest in the organisation

Democracy: There are different types of democracies and the systems can be complex and some are more democratic than others. All involve some form of right to elect governments and other officials for all citizens, as well protections such as a fair and independent legal system, a free press and other rights such as joining a trade union and freedom of expression.

Media co-operative: A media organisation owned democratically and equally by many individuals, rather than single owners or corporate investors

Why should I pick reporting/journalism as the genre for my Orwell Youth Prize entry?

The Orwell Youth Prize is interested in your viewpoint on what is happening in your area. How do things happening around you relate to national and global problems? What can your perspective or the perspective of those you know add to the issue? We want to encourage you to try it out,

Good reporting requires research, rigour and clarity. It may be outside your writing comfort zone, but when done well it can have a big impact. One of our 2020 winners Jessica Tunks is a great example of this. Following her win, Jessica’s piece ‘Knifepoint’ has been republished in VICE and on the Scottish Violence Reduction unit website. The piece also provoked comment from her local MP Stella Creasy:

“In 1984 Orwell wrote ‘They can’t get inside you if you can feel that staying human is worthwhile, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them’. This piece embodies that spirit; it holds a mirror to our community and speaks fearlessly and clearly about how pathways for young people like Ali become cut off, as society fails to value their future and our shared responsibility in that process. To write with such passion about knife crime and its impact is to be a voice that makes a difference; someone who isn’t beaten by injustice but is using their platform to call for us all to address it. In doing so, ‘Knifepoint’ embodies the relationship Orwell described so powerfully between independence of mind and changing the world.” Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow.

Want to find out more about getting into journalism?

https://presspad.co.uk/ 
https://www.journoresources.org.uk/

April is the overall winner of the Agincourt 600 Poetry Competition in the secondary category. April is commended in the Poetry and Political Language Challenge on Young Poets Network, in partnership with the Orwell Youth Prize.

***

We asked April some questions about the inspiration behind ‘so you want to talk about the ap*calypse’ and her writing process. 

What was the inspiration for your poem?/How did you approach thinking about political language in a creative way?

I took a break from Instagram earlier this year (like many people did) and when I came back, ‘social justice’ accounts were ubiquitous – but the most popular accounts by far had pretty layouts and graphics so people could fit incredibly serious topics into the theme of their Instagram profiles. It was sad, strange and desensitised all at once – like they were both trying to quantify the complexity of social justice and hold onto some shred of normalcy from the simple social media we used to know. I was thinking about the most mad and awful situation possible, and how they’d handle it.

What is your one tip to other young writers/poets?

Keep a note of things that come into your head during the day, or things you just find interesting- song lyrics, road signs, phrases, pictures, things people say. Record it all, and come back to it if you get stuck with a piece of poetry.

Which writer/s/poet/s most inspire you and why?

Alun Lewis and Leo Tolstoy. They both make the past seem very close, and the future something even we haven’t experienced yet. It feels very much this year like we are living as the last of our kind, so to reach back and see we’ve always felt the same is such a comfort – Lewis and Tolstoy bring people near each other like no other, and I would love to create a similar closeness with my writing.

What are you reading at the moment?

‘Time Without Clocks’ by Joan Lindsay.

Divya was a commended Foyle Young Poet in 2018. She is the third-prize winner in the Poetry and Political Language Challenge on Young Poets Network, in partnership with the Orwell Youth Prize. She is commended in the 2020 poetry translation challenge with Modern Poetry in Translation, judged by Clare Pollard; and in August Challenge #2: Fairy Tale Poetry. She was longlisted in the 2019 National Poetry Competition and in the 2020 Art to Poetry challenge.

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We asked Divya some questions about her poem, process and inspiration at the moment.

What was the inspiration for your poem?/How did you approach thinking about political language in a creative way?

Since 2016, when Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I have become more and more aware of the manner in which political discourse has become increasingly less “political” in nature. As our country’s leader, Trump is, in a certain sense, the physical embodiment of politics. Yet his language is not only casual, coarse, and thoughtless, but is also often full of hate, bigotry, and prejudice. Additionally, Trump has claimed social media as the platform on which he addresses (and often criticizes) other politicians, public figures, and news outlets. I don’t think that Trump himself is aware of how powerful each word he spews on social media truly is. His tweets, at least since the beginning of his presidency, have been viewed as official political statements. People around the world take him and his word seriously. In my poem “Through the Lens of @realDonaldTrump: A Decade of Twitter Politics,” I approach the incredulity I feel towards Trump’s public use of language. In creating a visual poem consisting of intersecting fragments of Trump’s tweets, I have tried to highlight the often random and shocking nature of his declarations, which rarely relate to each other in any way except for the fact that they possess the ability to offend, appall, and unnerve.

What is your one tip to other young writers/poets

You need to be willing to take risks, to be honest, and to make yourself vulnerable.

Which writer/s/poet/s most inspire you and why?

I am currently quite inspired by poets who bring a unique perspective to their craft, forcing their readers to writhe in uncomfortable questions. Three poets I have been most recently intrigued by are Jericho Brown, Chris Abani, and Terrance Hayes. These poets write with purpose, with passion, and with power. Focusing on themes such as the history of racism, sexual identity, incarceration, and the human body, these poets write with tender and yet haunting detail. I believe that there exists some writing that is safe to classify as essential—to classify as necessary to the age-old literary tradition and to its evolution. The work of Jericho Brown, Chris Abani, and Terrance Hayes is essential. Their writing needs to be read. Why? Because the narratives and images that these writers paint with their words are marked by a level of urgency that has the power to transform both minds and societies. Their writing forces readers to self-reflect and challenge their own roles as audience members, as societal contributors, and on a more basic level, as members of our human race. The writing of Brown, Abani, and Hayes transcends the limits of artistic creation.

What are you reading at the moment (or a book you have enjoyed recently)

One book I read recently that truly made me stop and think was Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a novel that is rich with philosophical explorations of the role of the human mind.

Irma is the second-prize winner in the Poetry and Political Language Challenge on Young Poets Network, in partnership with the Orwell Youth Prize. Irma is also commended in August Challenge #1: Re-mixing History, Fiction and the Unexpected.

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We asked Irma about the inspiration behind ‘IN WHICH PAPA (A SAILOR) GOES DEAF’ and the writing process.

What was the inspiration for your poem?/How did you approach thinking about political language in a creative way?

This poem draws on elements from my personal life; my father has worked as a naval engineer throughout most of his adult life, and as a result of his everyday work conditions he is now experiencing permanent hearing loss.

For this poem, I wanted to convey how bureaucratic language can obscure the reality of working people: the routine hazards they face and the permanent physical damages they may suffer just from doing their jobs. I chose to use language directly from the British Columbia Workers Compensation Act because I wanted the reader to feel the confusion and frustration of trying to find one’s own experiences in the jargon of labour law.

What is your one tip to other young writers/poets?

Give your poems more time than you think is necessary. In the creative rush of writing, it can be easy to get overconfident and ignore any mistakes or imperfections. I find that a good night’s sleep always brings a lot of insight, not to mention another pair of eyes.

And, of course, read as much and as widely as possible. Inspiration can come from anywhere.

Which writer/s/poet/s most inspire you and why?

I’m really inspired by Karl Ove Knausgaard’s approach to writing about everyday life. He has so much reverence for the little details that surround him. His writing has inspired me to pay more attention to all the beauty around me—the little things that I wouldn’t normally notice.

I also love listening to music, and song lyrics have been really influential in my writing. Some of my favourite musicians are Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, and Leonard Cohen—all brilliant lyricists in their own way.

What are you reading at the moment? 

I just finished Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon. It’s a beautiful, vibrant memoir about family, written with incredible affection. Ginzburg’s account of her upbringing and early adulthood is equal parts funny and heartbreaking, and as relevant as ever. In between all the domestic squabbles and pet phrases, there’s a lot to learn from the Levi family’s continued resistance to fascism.

Hannah is the first prize winner in the Poetry and Political Language Challenge on Young Poets Network, in partnership with the Orwell Youth Prize. She is the second prize winner in the second Bloodaxe Archive challenge, about White Space, and is commended in the fourth Bloodaxe Archive challenge, Take Note. She is also the second prize winner in the 19-25 age category in the Turn Up the Volume challenge. Hannah is additionally a winner in the 2016 Young Poets Network August Challenge #2, as well as a commended poet in August Challenges #1 and #4. She is also a winner in the 2016 Behind the Curtain poetry challenge, in partnership with the V&A Museum, and the winner of the 2016 Even It Up Poetry Challenge in the 15-18 age category.

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We asked Hannah some questions about her poem, process and inspiration at the moment. 

What was the inspiration for your poem?/How did you approach thinking about political language in a creative way?

I am a writer living with disabilities (hence the golden shovel social care fact), with grandparents that I adore despite our opposing opinions. 2015 was the year I was diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, and there was the looming date of the Brexit referendum. This challenge sparked something really interesting within me. As a disabled LGBTQ+ woman everything I do, every breath I take is political, so adding the Brexit angle which is so polarising was interesting because I wanted to humanise people with different opinions to mine.

What is your one tip to other young writers/poets

Keep all of your notebooks. I refer back to poems I wrote five years ago, when I didn’t have the right resources or experience to make a cohesive piece of art in the same way I would now. At the time I didn’t like these pieces of writing, and would have thrown them out hadn’t they been in a bound book. I now look back through my old notebooks and harvest lines/themes for my current projects. When you’re saving work from the bin, you’re saving something potentially very valuable, which like wine just needs to age a little.

Which writer/s/poet/s most inspire you and why?

Kim Moore is a huge inspiration of mine, not just for her poetry but her lyric essays and recent ‘decide your own adventure’ doctorate. I love the work of Caroline Bird and something amazing about lockdown has been that I have been able to go to virtual events and hear her pearls of wisdom in real-time. I also really admire Rebecca Goss and her first book ‘Her Birth’. It gave me permission to write about illness and its impact on family in an unflinching but heartfelt way.

What are you reading at the moment (or a book you have enjoyed recently)

I have just finished reading the non-fiction book ‘Letters of Note’ which is a huge book filled with very random but genuine letters – the Queen writing her recipe for drop scones for the US President; and Amelia Earheart writing to her soon to be husband about her reservations and free-flowing boundaries when it comes to their relationship. Poetry wise I have just finished reading and immensely enjoyed ‘When I grow up I want to be a list of further possibilities’ by Chen Chen published by Bloodaxe.

The Michelin Woman

Extract from ‘The Michelin Woman’, by Sophie Ritchell

I gave in that week. Signed up for TT. Call me a pushover, hell, maybe I was. But you kind of get used to being pushed over when you’re on the streets. It’d become second nature.

Two days in, and I’d pretty much adjusted to it. Her. Rhoda. The way she worked, the fact she squirmed if someone ate crisps too loudly next to her, how she saw old school teachers in the faces of cars. She reminded me of a character in some popular Brit Flick, the sort of person that Empathy Grant would win a Bafta for playing.

It didn’t really click that we lived in the same universe until that afternoon.

• • •

Rhoda wouldn’t give it directly to him, couldn’t trust someone like that with a couple of quid, might spend it on drink, drugs, whatever, but Greggs did steak bakes and sandwiches, and she could just nip in, the Deliveroo guy wasn’t coming until quarter past anyway so she had ten minutes.

She landed on a bean and cheese pasty in case he was veggie, which was sweet. Shame Pops was lactose intolerant, but no-one thinks to ask about that sort of thing, and he was always chuffed with anyone’s donation, even if it meant he spent the following night barfing it up behind the recycling bins.

Wish I was as nice as Pops.

We called him Pops because he had grey hair and someone said he used to live in Boston, and that was why he sounded like he was pinching his nose when he asked for change. Never asked him if it was true though. That back of the roof of the mouth ‘a’ could have just been untreated dysphagia.

Pops was one of those guys who you kind of just like. We met at St Joseph’s Soup Kitchen on Radford Av, and – I swear I’ll never forget this – as soon as he saw me, his chest started to heave up and down like he was lugging a sack of baking potatoes around in his rib-cage, and he started to hiccup. A bit of me thought maybe I looked so bad I’d given him a heart attack or something (crazy, I know, but my brain had sort of turned to mush by this point). Anyway, turned out he was cracking up, cracking up over my white puffer coat. Said he’d always wanted to meet the Michelin Man in person, shame he had to go for his female counterpart, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. And so I got my name.

Pops was better than WikiHow, told me to tie my backpack with a piece of string and wear it back-to-front when I went to sleep so I didn’t have to learn the hard way, and that job interviewers stop paying attention when they get wind that you have no fixed address. Lent me cash once when I couldn’t afford tampons, and never stopped making that gag about BGT and the purple buzzer once he figured it made me laugh. That sort of thing meant a lot back then. A whole lot.

It killed me that Rhoda had absolutely no clue.

• • •

She gave Pops the pasty and headed down the road to the block of red brick flats next to the Jolly Taxpayer. Her sister, Andi, had that day become legally able to watch Alien and The Walking Dead, and was sat with her mum in the front room opening every birthday card like a book and flicking through the orange pages inside. Seemed everyone had learnt from their mistakes on Rhoda’s fifteenth six years ago and steered well clear of the pink unicorn slippers or sex toys (their granny had always been a bit wild).

They knelt on the carpet and scrapped over who got the biggest slice of pizza, which was plonked in the middle of them, sagging into its biodegradable packaging like a round table missing the good old days of chivalry. Rhoda knocked her unwanted olives all over the floor and had to spend the next ten minutes leeching the stains out with a wet tea-towel (they couldn’t find the sponge). Andi didn’t help. Cleaning up other people’s leftovers every Saturday was enough, she didn’t need to get rid of her sister’s muck too. Then, when it got to seven, she grabbed her purse and made for the door, ducking out of the way of her mum’s slobbery goodbye kisses. Party. Friend’s house. Back by eleven.

At eight Rhoda and her mum watched a rerun of Avatar 4. At half ten, Rhoda went to bed.

It was two when she woke up again; someone was choking on swear words. She flumped out of her mattress and shuffled along the corridor to the kitchen door.

Her mum, back against the wall, had sunk down into a stool and was scraping words out of the sobs in the bottom of her throat.

“How did she get hold of them?”

Someone shifted slightly, and through the frosted glass Rhoda could now see the navy blue of a policeman’s uniform next to the breakfast bar.

“Friend bought them. She paid him back – birthday money, was it?”

Her mum swore again and sunk further down, leaving marks above her where the shaking curve of her spine had rubbed the paintwork raw.

“But you said, you’re saying she’s ok? Shit, please. Please, I swear she’s barely fifteen,
she’s young, stupid, so, so stupid, but she’s my baby. She’s fifteen.”

Oh, man. Her face at that moment. A skull vacuum-packed in red plastic and two ping-pong ball eyes that had forgotten to blink.

“She’s in hospital now. They’re assessing the possibility of other hallucinogens too, but if she’s clear, the medical advisor thinks it won’t be too long till she’s out.”

A pause.

“There’ll be other consequences though.”

The volume dial switched up several notches.

“Of course there’ll be other consequences – they’ve been playing heavy metal in my head for
the past half hour! Do you think I’m stupid? They fucking killed someone!”

At this, Rhoda swore and went in.

• • •

The Thursday after, myself again, I went back to St Joseph’s. It was snowing, and those of us without a place at a shelter had turned sort of grey, like the slush you sometimes get trying to stuff itself down the neck of the gutter. I got talking to Rocky in the queue, said I was counting down the seconds till Pops came up to me and asked if I sold winter tyres (it was a running joke). He looked at me like I’d just kicked a dog.

“Shut up. Shut up, that’s nasty. It’s only been a week.”

I was dumbfounded. “What the hell?”

“What the hell? What is wrong with you? It’s been six days since some fucking off their heads teenagers beat Pops to a pulp, and it’s okay to make jokes about it now, is it? That’s sick.”

That’s sick.

That’s sick, that’s –

I’d driven over a smashed beer bottle and was slowly deflating –

this couldn’t have happened – this could not have happened –

fuck.

Sophie Ritchell is a human rights activist and writer. She was the first candidate to undergo Temporary Transplantation in 2057, when she was transferred into the mind and body of Rhoda Hatherford (now Johnson-Smith). Following this, she has become a formidable advocate for the campaign against addiction among vulnerable young people, speaking in schools, colleges and youth organisations across the UK. Her firm conviction in the power of empathy to bring about fundamental social and political change has led to her uniting with millions of others in championing the adoption of TT on a global scale.

Five years ago, a Quiri investigation reported that since the transplantation process became common practice in the late seventies, it has eradicated worldwide discrimination, conflict, poverty and preventable causes of illness. It was also one of the key reasons for the termination of climate change. Without it, we would not be able to live and breathe today.

Sophie’s complete autobiography is currently available online and in selected bookstores.

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This piece contained some of the most unique and stand out prose of the entire competition. I feel like there’s a longer piece (perhaps a novel?) in the making. Kerry Hudson, Orwell Youth Prize Judge

“Hugely enjoyable, clever, multi-layered, lying in wait to entertain you on every level.The Michelin Woman draws you into its world and story with affecting language, vivid characters, and dialogue; it makes you look, listen, think, genuinely care, before springing a completely unexpected final trick on the reader. Playing with the format of the competition itself, this story reads you. I loved it.”  Nicola Baldwin, Playwright and Scriptwriter

Naomi Thomas is a senior Orwell Youth Prize 2020 Runner Up, responding to the theme ‘The Future We Want’.

Here There Are No People

The speakers all are children. The lines can be shared out in any way between the characters. They may be played by any number of actors.

1
I don’t want to make anyone sad.
Why would I want to make you sad?
If I did want to make you sad, I would tell you the story of when we got on the boat.

2
We were having breakfast.
The bombs fell.
When will the war stop?
The house was about to fall in on us, so we all went outside.
We went to see what the bombs had destroyed. It had destroyed our neighbour’s house. But he didn’t die and no one was hurt.
I was very afraid for him.
If he died, I would have no one to play with.
I want the war to end.
We live day by day.
I wish that I did not have to worry about the bombs.

3
They took boys like my brother, gave them weapons and sent them to fight. My father said ‘we needed to leave’.
My father said ‘we will have a better life’.
We got in the car.
We knelt down so no one could see us as we crossed.
The roads were full of dead people.
There were dead people with no heads or no hands or no legs.
It took three days.
We arrived in a building where we waited for a boat.
I was scared, that’s it.
Why do I have to live like this?
There isn’t another way.

4
There were two boats.
The first one sailed and then moments later it sank.
The families wanted to return to the shore, but one of the smugglers took out a gun and started firing.

The water was calm when we started.
The boat was so packed with people that my knees were bent to my chest.
I could hear the engine was having problems.
The driver spent an hour trying to fix it, but he couldn’t.
I heard someone say ‘we will all sink’.
The boat wasn’t that rigid.
It deflated.
Waves started to hit the boat.
The boat was full of water and started to sink.
We jumped into the sea.
We didn’t have any life jackets, just a few rubber rings.
I could hear the screaming of children.
There were bodies everywhere.
They were dying all around us.
But we couldn’t help them.
Will anyone help us?
They don’t care.
Men were taking off their life vests and drowning.
Perhaps it was their only choice.
A man approached my mother with a child.
He said ‘please take the baby, I am very tired’. Then he gave up.
I couldn’t swim very well.
I was being pulled under by the current.
Some people took off their clothes to swim better.
I didn’t. Now I have sores across my legs and neck where the clothes rubbed against my skin. We were all swimming slowly.
We were all tired.
My father helped me to the shore.
We were all shivering from the cold.
The entire time I was thinking ‘if I give up I will die’.
So either I make it or I die.
I only had one thought and one option: ‘don’t stop’.
My father was very angry.
The smugglers took our money and left us to die.
We are like cargo to them.
They don’t care if we live or die.
No one cares.
Who is helping us?
Will anyone help us?
Even if I had known the boat was going to sink I would still have made the journey.
Even if I had to swim all the way.
It’s better to die trying than to die back there.

5
We arrived yesterday.
I am happy because it is better here.
I miss everyone.
There are other children here.
We play with clay and we make houses and we make mud men.
We animate them and pretend they can talk. I ask my mother when we can go back.
She says this is our home now.
This isn’t my home.

6
I’d like to leave this camp.
We all have dreams.
I’d like to live in a comfortable house, one with warm water. I warm up by the heater.
We don’t have any blankets to cover us, only pillows.
We only have one blanket for all of us.
The wind never stops even if the sun is shining.
No one helps us.
I wish someone would.

7
It’s quiet here.
I get scared when I hear a car or a plane that is too loud. I dream that something is coming to kill me.
And I get scared, so I decide to stay awake.
I feel that war is coming again.
I just want to be safe again.

8
I remember everything.
Everything was much better before.
But then war was happening.
I lost everything on the journey, but I have my life. So I am okay. I am just thankful that we survived.
I don’t know what happened to everyone else. I worry for them. My country isn’t the same anymore.

9
They came.
They asked us to leave.
But this is our home now.
This is my home too, isn’t it?
Even if we live in tents on the streets.
They say to us ‘you’re not wanted here anymore’.
But we live here.
Everyone stares at us.
They call us names.
They spit.
They tell us ‘you can’t be here, you make it dirty here, this place is full of you and we are fed up’. They spray tear gas in our tents while we sleep.
Haven’t we suffered enough?
We came for safety.
My father said ‘we’ll find somewhere to stay’.
I’m not welcome, am I?
Are there people who will help us?
But here, no.
Here there are no people.
No people.

***

This poem is evocative and powerful but also technically assured. The idea that this poem is a play for voices shows the author’s ambition and gestures towards an exciting combination of styles to arrive at a new style altogether. This author has much to offer the future of creativity and so I hope they keep making things. Kayo Chingonyi, Orwell Youth Prize Judge

Noah Robinson is a junior Orwell Youth Prize 2020 Runner Up, responding to the theme ‘The Future We Want’.

What was the inspiration for your piece?

Sensationalised news stories are often detached from the personal impact of events, losing the perspective of those affected. In ‘Here There Are No People’, I wanted to explore the experiences of child refugees, whose’s individual stories and emotions are forgotten amidst the large scale picture. After reading ‘Seven Jewish Children’ by Caryl Churchill, I was drawn to the use of the unattributed lines of dialogue. I choose to use this to create a collective narrative, exploring what a child might go through to reach safety. Although we may not be fully aware of the trauma they have experienced, we can still sympathise with their desire to achieve a better life.

Why did you choose the medium of your chosen form (poem, fiction, essay etc) to communicate your idea about the future?

Plays provide authenticity for unheard voices, drawing attention to often under-represented perspectives. We connect most deeply to human-driven stories and the immersion created from a shared experience with an audience can inspire social change. They can be used to provide a startling reaction to controversial issues and taboo subjects. Grotowski describes the ‘beautiful lie’: something should not be done because it is expected or looks good. Theatre should confront topical reflections and challenge an audience to think, feel and change.

What is your one tip to young writers?

Set rules or constraints. Often when writing, having a particular focus can provide a more fully formed idea. When writing ‘Here There Are No People’, I only wrote about true events or experiences. The dialogue is either verbatim or influenced by interviews with child refugees and news articles. Try to create a challenge, it will push you to create a truly original, and often more exciting, piece of work.

Given the global pandemic, has your idea about the future you want changed since you wrote the piece?

The current situation, I believe, has emphasised the importance of international cooperation and coordination. The refugee crisis is not the responsibility of a single country but of global significance. COVID-19 has shown how mutli-lateral relationships can provide a solution to global problems. Hopefully, this shows how such measures in the international community can create initiatives to tackle future crises.

Which writer/s most inspire you and why?

‘Machinal’ by Sophie Treadwell, ‘Faraway’ by Caryl Churchill, ‘The Doctor’ adapted by Robert Icke and ‘The end of history’ by Jack Thorne, all blur the distinction between personal and political issues, exploring the quiet implications of larger-scale social problems.

Ocean Blue

You are big, you are bold, you are beautiful and vast,
You are the constant in my many memories, provoking images that last.
Of a time when I was smaller, and sitting on the sand
Filling buckets, digging holes, pebbles in my hand.
How wonderous and blue you looked, how majestic, grand and brave,
How little I understood back then as I jumped each ebbing wave.

Plastic buckets, spades and flags,
Empty cans and plastic bags.
Picnic waste, bottles of glass,
Wave after wave of endless trash.

I’ve stood in awe and watched your powerful white horses ride,
Jumping, running, racing – on every passing tide.
Last year I went surfing, and stood amongst your sway
Waiting for my instructor to yell “Now! start paddling away!”
“don’t let the white horses catch you, race them to the shore”,
I raced your horses, I didn’t win, they swamped me with their roar.

Plastic buckets, spades and flags,
Empty cans and plastic bags.
Picnic waste, bottles of glass,
Wave after wave of endless trash.

At Christmas time, we visited you and stayed near Tamarin Beach,
An island full of paradise, a place I thought we’d never reach.
Man, you were beautiful there, your waves strong, but warm and clear,
Turquoise waters, fine white sand and friendships full of cheer.
For fourteen days we visited you, and played within your arms,
We surfed, we swam, we messed around – heaven truly had been found.

Plastic buckets, spades and flags,
Empty cans and plastic bags.
Picnic waste, bottles of glass,
Wave after wave of endless trash.

Hurricane! Hurricane! The warnings came,
Don’t go out – stay out of the rain.
For three days and nights, we were officially shut down,
When we were allowed out – your turquoise hue had turned brown.
You were dirty and dark, you were struggling to breathe,
You looked ill, and quite sick – but you were still there, and I was relieved.

Plastic buckets, spades and flags,
Empty cans and plastic bags.
Picnic waste, bottles of glass,
Wave after wave of endless trash.

Your vibrancy was shattered, ocean blue had been destroyed,
What was left was a mutated land of sand, I was angry and annoyed.
For all I could see was human rubbish, for mile after mile after mile,
Tyres, nets, cans and bottles, plastic waste amongst every pile.
A sight of pure horror – how had we let this be?
How had the human race been allowed to destroy the sea?

Plastic buckets, spades and flags,
Empty cans and plastic bags.
Picnic waste, bottles of glass,
Wave after wave of endless trash.

Our future must be different, it is time to say enough!
It is time to think about what we use and what we do with our old stuff.
The ocean isn’t our dustbin, it’s not ours to devastate,
But if we don’t change our behaviour, we shall obliterate
Our own future and that of millions of marine life forms in the sea,
And that is not the future I want for you or me.

***

This poem illustrated a brilliant grasp of form. I am jealous of the artfulness of those rhymes as well as the way each line sways with an ocean-like motion. Rhyming at this level is very difficult to do and that the lines have such a natural flow suggests an author who is confident in their use of the full range of poetic effects. Well done! Kayo Chingonyi, Orwell Youth Prize Judge

Ocean Blue is a junior Orwell Youth Prize 2020 Runner Up, responding to the theme ‘The Future We Want’.

What was the inspiration for your piece?

I’ve always loved water.  Being in it, being near it, being on it.  I was born in Devon and think there is a natural pull for me to be near the sea.  So many of my favourite family moments and memories are when we’ve been on family holidays by the sea or close to the beach.

Last year we went over to Mauritius to stay with some friends for Christmas.  They live not far from Tamarin Beach which is a beautiful part of Mauritius.  The sea there is so blue.  Like really turquoise.  It’s crystal clear, warm and just the most beautiful sea I’ve ever encountered.  The beach there is vast.  It stretches for miles and the sand is soft and white.  It really is the picture-perfect Mauritian beach.

While we were there we had a Cyclone.  It’s the first time I (or my family) have ever experienced such an event.  The winds were really strong and for 3 days the whole island was shut down and we were forced to stay inside with iron shutters down to keep us and our friends safe.  Whilst you are effectively locked inside it’s difficult to know what’s actually happening outside.  You can hear the winds, but you really don’t have any appreciation of what the strong winds are actually doing.

On the 4^th day the winds had dropped down to a ‘strong storm’ level and we were allowed outside.  There was evidence of fallen branches and leaves everywhere which was actually really shocking.  We took a walk to the beach that morning and when we turned the corner to the part of the beach where we had been only 4 days before we were absolutely shocked.  The beach was totally devastated.  What was once soft white sand and crystal clear water was now a muddy brown colour and the beach was absolutely covered in natural and man-made waste.  There was rubbish everywhere.  It was so shocking and really left a mark on me.  I was so sad that a sea so blue and so beautiful was actually hiding such a hidden horror.  My family and I stayed to assist in a beach tidy up and I have attached some pictures which I took (including one with my brother and sister next to some of the rubbish we collected), so you can see just how shocking the before and after sight really was.    It was this experience that inspired me to write my poem Ocean Blue.

Why did you choose poetry as the form for your ideas?

To be honest I simply chose poetry because it is an easier medium for me.  I’ve always struggled a little with my English lessons at school.  I’m more of a maths and languages student.  However since the start of January this year we have been studying unseen poetry in English.  Poems such as Kamikaze by Beatrice Garland, Exposure by Wilfred Owen and The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Tennyson.  My English teacher, Mrs Pomeroy, has really opened my eyes to the world of poetry.  It is her enthusiasm which has helped to unlock an unknown liking for studying stories which flow through the use of words and rhymes rather than having to read pages and pages of narrative.

When I was writing my poem Ocean Blue I was trying to create the effect of the waves rushing onto the beach and then ebbing away. I tried to use a rhythm within the poem that created this effect.  I think using poetry is a great way to get into writing stories.  I think for anyone wanting to put down their thoughts quickly, without having to write too much, poetry is a really good way of doing this.  There are lots of modern storybooks for children, but not so many poetry books.  I hope my poem might inspire other young writers to want to consider using this method as a way of expressing themselves through words.

Perpetual

Letty presses her fingers against the glass windowpane and wonders, idly, how hard she would have to press to shatter it.

It’s dark outside this little room, the only source of light the caustic glow of the streetlamps, garish brightness diluted by the thin layer of grime serrating the window. It seeps in and spills over the slumped bodies which drip over sofas and pool on the floor, sated by sleep. Corpses, rotting in the tomb of a remarkably average party, the remnants of which are still scattered across the room and festering in corners-bottles, little plastic packets, contents long since consumed, a lurid glint of pink lace flashing from under one of the sofa cushions.

She’s got a decent vantage point from her current place of rest, half-drunk, and sprawled unceremoniously across someone’s couch (she can remember the face of the girl hosting, but couldn’t tell you her name for a million quid, or a case of booze). Her hair, dark, and damp with sweat, clings uncomfortably to her scalp like grease, hot and sticky as motor oil as it pours over her collarbones. She scrunches it back behind her head, shifts slightly to get more comfortable, top riding further up her umber midriff. If her mother were here, she thinks, imagination spiralling tipsily away from her, she would pull her top down, eyes flickering hawkishly around the room to ensure nobody saw anything they shouldn’t have, even though everyone has been passed out for at least an hour now. It’s a sort of sixth sense for her mother, bred into her, a wariness as intrinsic to her daily life as breathing, or boredom. Fuelled by a life of hungry gazes that linger just a bit too long, wandering hands and wandering eyes, hot breath that clings to your skin like condensation on a windowpane. Accustomed to thick, persistent fingers kneading you like bread, like something malleable, passive as a cadaver. It’s not an unpleasant image, hits her with a bitter little jolt of warmth, like downing a glass of whisky, her mother, looking out for her, fingers rough and warm against her abdomen, the skin over her joints worn thin, as though she’s boiled her hands along with endless bowls of soup and loads of washing.

She’s not like her mother (rather an understatement, but she chooses to leave it at that). She sprawls back comfortably, adjusts nothing, feels sleep creeping in, not bothered by the fact that the room around her is clogged up with bodies, all twitching and mumbling and sighing, an unconscious cacophony of tiny, somnolent noises, or that the air is thick and soupy, reeking with the potent stench of sweat and indecision. Uncaring. She could find a home in a hurricane.

‘Perpetually unbothered’, a teacher had once written on her school report, and she had passed the report around with a jagged, shark-tooth grin, laughed, low and creaky, the laugh of someone who’s been filling her lungs with smoke since she was twelve, because everyone around her was breathing it out anyway and no-one saw the point in stopping her. She prides herself on this, the fact that everything about her has always been laid-back, indolent, the way her tongue winds lazily around her mouth, scrounging for words, the way her eyes roll in her head, slow and deliberate, the way her body rolls and undulates as she moves, almost graceful in its sheer passivity. She is someone who gave up a long time ago, perhaps before she even knew what she was giving up on, perhaps before she even had a fair chance to take a shot at anything. She is not bothered by this transitory half-existence because she has always hinged her life on futile things – a lazy afternoon spent lolling on someone’s front lawn, before the neighbourhood went to rot, and grass bled into gravel, warm evenings when her mother would bring home a takeaway on payday.

She wishes she could stop thinking about her mother, but she’s certain no higher power has ever really listened to her wishes before, doesn’t know why this particular spell of tipsiness has dragged up so much unpleasantness, but supposes this her lot for the night, a moulting couch and an unexpected bout of melancholy. They had unravelled quietly, her and her mother. There hadn’t been any screaming matches, no acidic eruptions of fury, spewing venom from forked tongues. It was more akin to gnawing silently at the inside of your mouth for years on end, and only noticing when you open your lips to speak and your teeth are stained red. She had simply sidled into the kitchen one morning to find her mother making toast for her father, something she did every day, just the way he liked it, yellow butter oozing over the bread like pus, and realised the garish glare of the sun streaming in through the window wasn’t the only reason she couldn’t look her mother in the eye anymore.

That’s the thing about eyes, bright and glassy, twinkling like a mirror-a window to the soul, but whose? If she can’t meet her mother’s gaze anymore, is it because she can no longer bear to see the resigned boredom muddying her irises, the inexorable exhaustion underlining the already-prominent creases seeping from the corners, or because, more than anything else, she dreads the idea of seeing herself staring right back at her? Can’t, won’t process the fact that this is what her own eyes will look like in ten, fifteen years, that maybe one day she will stand in a kitchen, halfway through making her umpteenth plate of toast, across from a daughter who shies away from her as though she is a story-book monster?

She doesn’t know her mother, not really. There is a difference between recognising something, and knowing something. She could pick her mother out of a crowd of thousands, sketch her hunched shoulders and stooped back from memory, but she would be hard pressed to tell you anything truly substantive about her. Sometimes, when she was younger, she would sneak glances at her mother in the mirror as she brushed her hair, deftly teasing out knots, and feel her tongue throb with questions, pounding against the walls of her throat, practically tripping over themselves as they clamoured desperately to be heard. Simple questions, the kind teenagers could be asked by well-meaning aunts at family gatherings, the kind of questions you might find bothersome, if you’re used to them. What are you interested in? What do you care about? What do you want to be? Or, rather, what did you want to be? Any opportunities for Letty’s mother to make something of herself are long gone, stolen, a quiet kind of robbery. Siphoning chances away from her gradually, her whole life, things it had never even occurred to her to want, because nobody had told her she could, the way nobody bemoans not having a unicorn for a pet. We do not long for things we believe are impossible.

It’s a familiar tale, a modern classic. Girl meets boy (this is where the story begins, any inner life the girl may have had prior to this point evidently not relevant), girl drops what little she has to begin with, a child is born, the door, which has been half-shut this entire time, creeping closer and closer to the doorframe, slams in the girl’s face. A perpetual cycle, sick of its own equilibrium, lived by her mother, her aunts, any hypothetical daughters she may be obedient enough to pop out. She has never understood people who talk about the future with starry-eyes and glowing reverence, as though it’s a land of endless possibility and unknowable outcomes. Here is the truth, as she sees it-your future is spawned solely from your past, your ending decided the moment you are born. It’s about your gender, the size of your parent’s bank account, the colour of your skin, the name of the street you grew up on, your catchment. A thousand tiny hands, nudging your fingers as you scrawl the story of your life, ripping the pen from your grasp and taking the plot in whatever direction they please. Occasionally, she contemplates what she might have been if she had been drip-fed a diet of expectations rather than inevitability, taught to strive instead of succumb. In some, awful, twisted way, she is almost glad that people do not ask her, or her mother, what they want to do in the future-she could not come up with an answer, not in a million years. 

Letty presses her fingers against the glass windowpane and wonders, idly, how hard she would have to press to shatter it.

***

“I loved Perpetual for its deftly focussed anger, suffused with love, about feminism, mothers / daughters, breaking glass ceilings and the politics of boredom. Written with intense energy, propulsive, assured; like a one-take, super-slo-mo, opening shot, a teaser-trailer for a movie not-yet-made, the future shimmers in every moment. This is what it feels like to be young. This is a voice I want to hear more from.”  Nicola Baldwin, Playwright & Scriptwriter

‘Perpetual’ is a senior Orwell Youth Prize 2020 Runner Up, responding to the theme ‘The Future We Want’.