Student Excels At Poetry Competition

A St Paul's student, Daphne, has been chosen as one of the winners of the Simon Powell Poetry Prize. Daphne was inspired to enter the national competition for young poets after visiting Poetry Live with the school this year.

The winners will get the opportunity of performing at a Poetry Live event and will also receive a workshop session at the Barbican, along with poetry collections by the Poetry Live poets.

Her poem, Sallqa (meaning savage/wild in the Quechua language of South America), is set in the mountains of the Andes.

We're very proud of Daphne for this fantastic achievement and particularly enoyed her wonderful poem.

Sallqa

Solemn, he stands

among the most sacred Apus

keeper of the stone and sky

where only condors fly

I stood by his feet

3900 meters high

dreaming myself upon his crown:

that moment of arrival,

of completion - of conquest.

How proud I must be, how proud I must be

Altitude sickness is killing me

I had no choice but to leave him,

stunning, lethal mountain.

Like him,

I long to be wild

long to be savage

long to be untameable

For I am of Nature;

to her I return

I shall be a condor, wing over the world, soul untethered.

I shall be a serpent,

skin shed, life renewed.

I shall be a puma,

heart f the earth, fierce and courageous

I shall be myself.

Unfettered, whole,

Sallqa