Well done to James from Stockport School who takes the Key Stage 4 prize for his poem around belonging.
To read James' poem and the full Speak Up North 2024 anthology, head to our website and download for free: www.thetutortrust.org/speak-up-north/2024
Belonging
The bullets hurt, but I do not care. It is bewitchingly beautiful, like it should not be this good, but it is. It is strange. My family, their presence is the thing. The secret ingredient for greatness. I am not sure how dazed I look, but I must look quite bewildered, as they are all shooting me side eyes.
It is beautiful.
It's so beautiful I don't care what they think. But then why does it feel like they are stabbing me in the back? It is just a few. It's just a view... No, I need to run; I need to hide. I need to cover my face. They stare at me. I want to curl up into a ball and roll away. But they are my family? I feel like I should not be here, though. Why would you make someone feel like they do not belong somewhere? Why do people make others feel that they don't belong somewhere? It is crazy how something as small as liking a view more than others can outcast you. Make you feel like you should find somewhere else, somewhere to hide, from the people who think you're you're a freak, even if they are your own family. Sorry, I repeated myself a bunch there, didn't I? I may have got the tenses wrong, the person wrong. What if I do not belong to the writers’ community? But surely, it is about what your message, your meaning is. Not how well you did on your English GCSE or how well you did in school. It is about the deeper picture. The true reason you put your words where they were. Did you use a thesaurus to make your piece sound better? Or to get praise so you can feel good about yourself? Did you really understand what it meant? Or did you just put it in because it sounded nice? What if that word does not belong in that context? Either way, you should not change a word or yourself to make you fit in somewhere where you might not belong or feel right to.
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