CND Peace Education was incredibly impressed with the entries for its recent poetry competition, with the winning poem one of ‘real ambition, drawing nature and human loss together with striking originality’.
Earlier in the year, we did a nationwide call-out for students to submit original poems to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our competition was judged by poet and CND Peace Education patron Antony Owen, along with poet and publisher Aaron Kent.
We’re delighted to announce that the winners were:
• Honourable Mentions Freddie Adams and Lily-Francis Finlay, Maghull High School, Liverpool; Isabel Webster, Stafford Grammar School; and Elsie Hemmings, Ysgol Clywedog.
• Runner Up Aanya Jain, King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls, Birmingham.
• Winner Fae Chui, Surbiton High School.
These young people all received certificates and read their poems aloud at a special event at BLOC, Queen Mary University on November 1st. The poems will all appear in an anthology alongside established poets published by Broken Sleep books later next year.
Judge Aaron Kent said of Fae’s winning poem: ‘This is a poem of real ambition, drawing nature and human loss together with striking originality. The idea of summer turning cold in 1945 is very effective, and the image of a house as a mother with “paper skin and wooden bones” is haunting. The transformation of petals into ash is both delicate and devastating. Yet the closing image of petals whispering stories of their ancestors offers a sense of renewal. A deeply imaginative and memorable poem.’
Judge Antony Owen said the following: ‘The cold summer by Fai Chui is an exceptional poem where the capability of human nature to destroy is focused on its effects on human flesh and also the environment. What impressed me most about this poem is the depth of research to the execution of metaphor. Here wood becomes a house, skin becomes paper and petals become ash with a juxtaposition of how the blast and heat affects from a bomb are utterly interminable and destructive. Within the poem is hope in that nature reclaims all that humanity takes and this was evident when the first oleander grew out of the ashes within a year of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. A gut wrenching and courageous poem that is fearless and forthright as any good war poem should be. Congratulations to Fae on a fine poem.’
Fae commented: ‘As conflict continues to shape the 21st century, I wrote “The Cold Summer” to reflect on the cruelty of war, drawing on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to highlight the human cost. The devastation serves as a constant reminder of the urgent need for peace and the value of innocent lives. I am very grateful to have my poem chosen as the winning entry, allowing this message of a peace to have a stronger voice.’
And here is the winning poem, congratulations Fae!
The Cold Summer
Cherry pink
Petals exhale spring’s shadows.
Forest green
Leaves shield a Kiji.
A petal plummets into a child’s palm,
Then sours and shrivels into ashes.
Autumn came early in 1945.
All the vibrant petals,
All the exuberant leaves
Plunged.
They fled their home
Whose limbs were snapped off rip by rip,
Abandoning their heart in the cold summer.
The house that was once a sanctuary,
A mother with paper skin and wooden bones,
protected her children from the horrors outside,
Head held high.
But her arms, her legs, her neck were churned into a twisted clatter.
She was left to freeze with nothing but the breeze as her companion.
So the house and the tree rotted.
A snow blanket covered their remains,
Thrown off when it got too hot
Revealing a snowfall of blush-tinted petals.
They whispered stories of their ancestors
As they revelled in their peaceful upbringing.