The butterfly flew a mile to a beautiful land where the sun was shining and no black sky appears but blue sky some beach and dandelions everywhere when the next day came there was a lot of noise she looked
there was a big bulldozer crushing a whole forest all the butterflies flew up into the sky and had nowhere to go By Natasha Taylor, aged seven, who receives Michael Rosen’s Quick Let’s Get Out of Here (Puffin). Submitted by Mrs Jane Mitra of Northgate School, Bishops Stortford, 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.
“Issue” poems are notoriously difficult. People say they don’t like being “preached at” yet in other contexts people are happy to sing hymns, chant slogans and listen to the rhetoric of political speeches. What make Natasha’s poem last in the mind’s eye is the image of the butterfly trying to escape to a place where there is “blue skysome beach and dandelions everywhere” but even there it is chased out. Widening it to “all the butterflies” widens it out to all of us. Nice pacing with the lines around “she looked”.
