ENGLISH

YEAR 10 CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY

For the beginning of Term 2, McKinnon’s Year 10 Creative Writing class have been embracing their inner bards and exploring some of the stranger spaces of poetry. They’ve dived into and written their own versions of Dada sound poems, SLAM, Poe’s nonsense drivel ‘The Raven,’ the Beat Generation’s proclamatory bellows, and the lunch poems of Frank O’Hara. 

They’ve experimented with Surrealist automatic writing and their generative writing game, the Exquisite Corpse. And they even vastly improved, line by line, what is commonly thought of as one of the worst pieces ever composed, ‘The Tay Bridge Disaster’ by William McGonagall. Through it all, these Year 10 poets have been encouraged to favor sound over sense; the image over meaning; and to know that language is just a game.

Their studies, experiments and imitations culminated in their latest learning task, which required them to perform a poem of their own creation in front of their peers, accompanied by a personal reflection exploring their compositional process. The Year 10s rose to the occasion and presented a wide array of bizarre, touching, beautiful, curious, rhythmic, fractured, strange and compelling poems.

The following is an exemplary example of the work that was done by the class (but by no means the only) from Kayla Morgan (Year 10) doing her best Allen Ginsberg:

Rapacity 

I saw the ‘best’ minds of an older generation, ravaged by avaricious desires, 

scheming in chambers of pearly white, ivory and scarlet-stained pillars,

conniving for a ploy to confiscate their oh-so-beloved citizens’ ever draining earnings,

who let groves of trees bow down wise and weary heads, touching poisoned earth,

with a muted sigh as metal haphazardly severs through bark, sap, heartwood, 

who chain calves and lambs to soil toxicated with pesticides, 

watching with amusement as they become subject to mutilation, confinement, 

who recommend quick convenience filth that infects flowing streams and rivers with 

chip packet and soda can garbage, virulent chemicals, 

“all that biodegradable shit is far too costly!”

who look in disdain at desperate refugees fleeing war-torn countries, 

beseeching for an opportunity, but are tossed aside into detention centres,

who laugh at sallow-faced, threadbare, malnourished vagrants, 

that resorted to alcohol, drugs and cigarettes in a futile attempt to ignore the mess of a life 

bestowed on them,

who permit perfidious men to gaze at women with a perverted intensity, 

at perturbed bodies, perishing under persistent hands whilst demanding “no, no, NO”

but turn a blind eye, keep sealed lips,

and who therefore sip “double sugar flat whites!”,

in a scarlet seat of plush red velvet, ignoring those who dare to fight

who dreamt of creating a better future, life, world for all those trees and lambs and streams 

but once tasted the sweet smell of crisp hundred dollar notes in hand and 

bloated bank accounts, they got swept away in methods of greed, 

to recreate the syntax and well-formed, lie driven speeches, 

stand before you compelling, full of “innovative ideas”, breaching self-made procedures

and rose reincarnate in exorbitant suits and blood splattered ties, 

with the absolute heart of a person who dreamed but was butchered out of their own good bodies by rapacity. 

Sam Florence

Head of English