EHS Writing Club

Evans High School’s Writing Club

Writing Club meets every Monday of Week B at lunchtime in D16, bringing together students from across all grades at Evans High School who enjoy experimenting with words, ideas and their imagination. Each session, students are given a prompt and invited to create a short piece of writing in response for the following session, giving them a fortnight to prepare a composition.

Students are free to choose any text type they like, with many students trying their hand at poetry, short prose fiction, screenplays and scripts.

One of the best parts of Writing Club is the chance for students to share what they have created. During our sessions, writers read their work aloud, discuss their creative intentions, and offer each other thoughtful feedback in a supportive and encouraging environment.

Our Writing Club Google Classroom also shares information about upcoming writing competitions so our budding writers can share their work for publication.

Below are some wonderful examples of the writing produced by our students as part of Writing Club this year.

‘The Undergrowth’

by Shayon Kannan (Year 11)

the mechanical whirr of the AC sings

with the shrills of cicadas.

— it’s the symphony of summer.

the sounds of Australia,

quietly fading in your head.

the sign by the park: “your fire risk today”,

extreme; the white arrow points sincerely.

the air dances in the distance.

or perhaps it’s your dry eyes.

‘learn to live by it’

bush fires are part of life.

towering trees, scattered shrubs, flourishing forests -

reduced to ash within hours.

an apocalyptic scene,

not replayed by film -

but rather replayed in memories.

fragmented thoughts.

screams, cries, pleads,

collapsed into vagueness.

lost to time.

the ash doesn’t stay empty,

the landscape slowly begins again.

the ground may seem to be waiting,

yet, the catalyst has already occurred.

split seeds rest beneath a charcoal blanket.

roots grow -

anchoring a prosperous future

the cicadas fall silent.

the world continues.

life continues -

despite fires,

despite disaster,

despite - everything.

perhaps we resemble the land more than we realise.

perhaps it’s understated,

we are catalysts for change,

just as we cause disaster.

destruction redirects us.

the undergrowth may be flourishing,

yet, without being burned, it wouldn’t exist at all.

we are told to chase our biggest dreams.

whether it’s fleeting or destroyed.

perhaps it’s time to question,

are those dreams worth holding onto,

or are they preventing something else from growing?

Writer’s Statement on ‘The Undergrowth’

My work explores the beauty of natural disaster, that fires not only bring death and destruction, but also redirection. I structured my work around the process of regrowth, both through how a seed germinates, but also how a new world is formed. I was inspired by the public’s negative view of bushfires -- despite bushfires being very much a normal process of Australia. This is very much like grief and hope, grasped on until eventually withered away.

An extract from ‘Downfall’

by Poppy Cavrak (Year 11)

Small wooden wheels groaned in aged agony through the small corridor into the arena. Eyes. They stare down from their embroidered walls with the same intensity as the hunger that ravages through the body on the ground. The wooden bars on the opposite curve slowly open. Clad in armour, emerges from the darkness like a man that had just crossed Styx into tartarus

thinking it was elysium. Like a mouse in a snake vivarium. A cacophony of screams, cheers and shrills of excitement amplified off the curved walls into pure static anticipation. Tall, young, prideful, stupid. clink... The chains melted off like a heavy cocoon, clattering onto the wooden platform. Over in seconds. CRUNCH…

Writer’s Statement on ‘Downfall’

‘Downfall’ was authored in inspiration of the song “Gladiator” by Jann and in rebuttal with the prompt “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” - Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

The idea of the text was to portray a gladiator who dies as a consequence of his love of fighting as an exploration of the question of if knowing what love felt like was worth it if you're going to feel the pain of losing it.

A poem about the Australian landscape

by Maisa Farzana (Year 10)

The distance of laughter that lulls with the synchrony of cicadas pricks my gaze,

I trace those muddled footprints of sound that jostle shoulders and smudges the welcomed scorch,

gliding like that red, Australian tide.

I hear it stream through the canopic brickwork of branches beside me,

leaden with the weariness of age,

and through the lattice of eucalyptus that trusses

the shared intimacy of bush–

One that stays foreign to me.

I watch their campfire stories spark and settle,

A longing that foams in my ears–

ribbons of smoky mince,

mingling with the hiss of fireworks that begin as Shweppe tabs cock back in the breeze,

the plains of my tongue starved

for the mutuality of grease.

A spindly twig combs currents through red ash as I draw a hot dog at my feet,

Tracing stories of ache and Australia

While an inky cool swells above me

in solidarity with the song of stars.

I listen for the draughts that wind wafts of pollen amongst a dwindling teal–

Whispering the bruised reds of bottlebrush and the gold of wattle into dusk,

When my peripheral swells with the awkward rustle of an ibis that limps among the shadows–

Wearing exile openly,

a white plume, stained with city-grime and the clamminess of bin juice,

Grazing at my hot dog as

I let the mosquitoes take from me freely,

And thank them as an itching buzz wreathes around my limbs like sleeves,

The only offering I know to give back

To the rituals that I borrow.

Still, the sky leans closest,

Holding me in its wide, unbroken arms–

With the softness of laughter among the branches,

And the shared intimacy of bush.