Arms out, feet lost, spinning child,

why do you spin and not stop,

when your ears turn cartwheels behind your eyes,

and your eyes are about to go pop?

Why twirl till the world is left only a blur,

and the colours blend madly to green,

and the people around you just twist into space,

and the bad things are only a dream?

You swagger and stumble, confused by the ground,

until you lie safe on your back,

where the sky trips on by, and the earth rolls around

and collapses too late to attack.

Your giggles and wobbles then tickle your toes,

and your T-shirt tugs hard to be free,

so you juggle your senses, and spin on the lawn.

I wonder: will you spin for me?

By Sarah String, aged 16, who receives a collection of Matthew Sweeney’s poetry. Submitted by Wendy Cooper of St Bede’s School, Redhill, Surrey, who receives the Poetry Society’s 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 071 240 4810.

The rhythmic control is what we notice in this week’s poem, that and the way the poem’s layout on the page mimics the spinning child. That would not be enough, however, without the control of detail - the lost feet, “the colours blend(ing) madly to green”, the people twisting into space, the T-shirt that “tugs hard to be free”. I was a bit suspicious of the rhyme in a few places - the “attack” in the fifth last line, for example, and the unpersuasively (I thought) rhetorical last line, but overall I found the piece impressive.