Celebrating National Writing Day- A poem by student Annabel Woolf

Published: 21/06/2023

Today as well as being the summer solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere) is National Writing Day, an empowering annual celebration of creative writing. As the National Literacy Trust campaign highlights, writing creatively has a multitude of benefits for people of all age groups: it enhances communication skills, increases well-being and helps develop emotional intelligence. For me, as an English teacher and a writer myself, I have to admit that above all these very important benefits, both writing and reading is also a hedonistic practice!

Here at Lionheart School in London, I have the pleasure and privilege of guiding students in their creative writing practice and below is a beautiful poem from one of my talented students, Annabel Woolf.

Emma Silverthorn

The Sea

Here we are,

 each of us a portable vessel of flesh and bone,

floating in a endless bed of salty water ,

 born by the delicate formations of interconnect tissue.

 Born from the settlement  of brutality – 

 formed by the pulverised ashes of unfathomable physical masses, 

that swarmed the universe billions of years ago.  

Their fateful gauntlet of violence forging the countless planets

The secretive ocean and the malleable earth. 

Our ancestors watched this improbable phenomenon bred from uncertainty –

 grow up into a world of tenderness and deceit. 

A world whose surface is animated by sea creatures such as me 

& frail figures who walk the dry earth on legs that range from 1 to 4.

  A world whose pulsating scents invade every nook and cranny.

 Both underwater and above –

dilating and expanding to the needs of different species,

unfolding with wild abandon                

They just like us are a  byproduct of nature 

whose existence is not necessary to the tides of time. 

But whom is all we know and as such an instrument of our curiosity. 

A fundamental wonderment meant to be explored

We are all creatures held captive by the cursious gamble of fate

 Hitching a ride on a  path that gives us a limited choice,

one that may thread a peaceful life or one of bitter sweet torment.

A long lineage of evolution formed from  atoms that were  shed by dying stars.

Cast of into groups all scrambling   for a chance to constellate into a living mass so secretly new , 

so uncommonly vast,

 gifted with untainted layers : 

lyrical footnotes of untapped knowledge hidden in deep water cracks ,

 mystical creatures whose beauty evades all that of common sight.

Or willing to follow the saturated tides of billions whom strive to follow paths trodden long long ago. 

Annabel Woolf. 

Annabel Woolf is a London-based poet and student of Literature currently studying at Lionheart School. 

Emma Silverthorn is a writer and educator teaching at Lionheart School.