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Several of our girls have had their poetry featured in Hidden Figures, an anthology of creative writing from across the Harris Federation.

Our Year 8 and 9 students were inspired to create these poems by their work with the ‘Golden Oldies’, a Southwark-based seniors’ organisation, where they conducted oral history interviews with Bermondsey residents who emigrated to the UK from Caribbean countries in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Having recorded their interviewees’ descriptions of the hostile reception they received when they first arrived in the UK, the students decided to give a voice to this marginalised community by turning their perspectives into poems which they performed at the termly HAB spoken word event.

Fuelled by this newfound sense of responsibility to give a voice to marginalised people, they extended the scope of their poetry to include other groups who have historically been ignored or relegated to the sidelines of society, such as soldiers who are routinely stripped of their humanity and viewed simply as weapons or methods of warfare, and also our students themselves who have often found themselves the victim of prejudice and discrimination from wider society, based on their age, gender, ethnicity or class.

We're so #ProudToBeHAB of our girls poems that we thought we'd publish them here for your to read.

Ms Wignall

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Lower my Head, Divert my Eyes

By Nadifa Ibrahim

 

No job, no money

That's just how life was to be

Six pounds a week was all I would ever see

 

Porcelain skin,

Hair pinned

Society’s ideals

To me was so surreal

 

Never out loud

no spoken truth

You stare me down with your hateful eyes

Yet your smiles hide your lies

 

Work just as hard maybe even harder

still I'm dirt beneath your shoes

Puff my chest, look ahead, bolder,

Taller and taller I grew and grew

 

Never earned as much

But we worked the same job

Had the same mechanics touch

 

Until life gave me that fatal awakening

That slap on the face

When your fist hit my chest

Lord knows I tried my very best

But my best was never enough

 

You threw the first punch but the boss had to let me go

Because of course I'm at fault as I didn't lay low

 

Lower my head divert my eyes

Work hard, save money, eat, repeat

That's how it went

Back then for someone like me

My melanin was all they could see

 

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War

By Ikraam Sheikbihi

 

The end of another sleepless night,

The suffocating gas invaded my lungs

Coughing, choking.  I counted the minutes

I reminisce about how life was before

I savour the white noise whilst the attacks have paused

 

Before war, the towering buildings stood tall,

The people worked and played

Little did they know that were to be pawns in a game of ruthless political chess

Toys for the man in charge, the dictator and his disciples

 

Now only rubble and demise lay on the scarred surface

Everyday new nameless bodies join the statistics in a war based on pride

The honourable people lose their value with the utterance of one word

 

War

 

Whilst the powerful bathe in their 8 figure sums

The destitute drown in their bottomless trenches

 

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The Coast is Clear Now

By Ava Jason

The coast is clear now,

My lights away from me.

Can I get them back?

Every depressing breath that escapes my abysmal figure,

Is a reminder of my tedious existence, without them.

 

My flag stands upright.

We have not succumbed,

Yet our world is now wilting,

Our flag stands upright.

Through our rationing,

Through our fog,

Through our forlorn suffocation,

Our flag stands upright.

 

The gas condenses my anger.

My friends have left, I stay.

I yearn for my past,

Though it may be tainted

But my flag miraculously remains.

My orders are clear, my actions intent.

A large, sinister force rips from

The control of my plane,

Ashes. Flames. Screams.

The soundtrack of my journey,

I plan to destroy the flag that still manages to stand upright,

To usurp it of its production of moral.

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Broken

By Ilham Alasow

 

Fragile, emotional

In the eyes of the media,

Women should have social anxiety

Rights of women subservient to those of men

 

We should be the anomalies

Equally as significant

Women being told that they’re inferior to men,

Is a theory

 

To be beautiful doesn’t mean you have to reach the ideals set by misogynists

 

Beauty is found within

Accepting your flaws

To be comfortable in your own skin

Not needing applause

 

Appearance is the skin

Inner beauty is the water

Reading the label when in fact

What matters is found inside

 

Inner beauty is pushed away

Like an abandoned orphan

 

Now I know our ignorance is a kind of bacteria

Multiplying when instead we should use the antidote

Knowledge

To know the inner beauty is what matters

Not the outer beauty

 

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Fears

By Basma El Hayani

I have fears for the future
In fact, I have many fears
But my number one fear
is that I won’t be able to be someone successful
Someone who cares for people
And listens to people
Someone who thinks about others
I am scared that I won’t achieve the goals
That I want to reach
The goals that may
Even be impossible to complete
Impossible to even believe
I start to think
Is there even a reason to compete
A reason to start to achieve
What I think I could achieve
A reason to believe
What I think I could believe
Because some people think
It’s useless
It’s useless to start to believe
It’s useless to start to complete
To start to complete the tasks
The tasks that I might misconceive
Leading to a different interpretation
Of what I can actually see
And so I’ll look up to my being
To find my meaning
So I’ll believe in myself
I’ll prove others wrong
And I will succeed
Succeed in my own
Unique way
I have many fears for the future
But succeeding isn’t one of them.