Mists. A girl watched the misty breeze When it innocently stared back.
She saw herself step in it without Thinking a thought.
The mist whirled and whirled until It solemnly died.
Yet nothing alive will ever know The cast of hope in that girl’s soul.
By Omar Badran, age 10, who receives Michael Rosen’s Quick Let’s Get Out of Here (Puffin). Submitted by Mrs Jody Barnes of Stoke Dameral Primary School, Plymouth, who receives the Poetry Society teachers’ newsletter, a quarterly bulletin which includes features on innovative approaches to poetry in the classroom as well as news on the latest resources, events and issues. For Poetry Society events, ring 0171 240 4810.
Mrs Barnes explains that the children had been looking at Kipling’s The Way Through the Woods and could write in response in any way they liked. The result for Omar is that Kipling’s poem seems to have given him a platform to deal with something that matters to him. He has found his own form to say this, and for sceptics about free verse note this: the first six lines are three repeated structures - statement followed by qualifier. Then, to change the tone, he changes the rhythm for the final statement - rather like the turning point in a classic sonnet. Omar has invented this, not copied it from Kipling or anyone else.