Winners 2009 : Commended : Emma Jourdan

Summer School 2012

The 8th Tower Poetry Summer School for young poets aged 18-23 will be held in Christ Church, Oxford from 28-31 August 2012. The tutors will be Alan Gillis (University of Edinburgh, Scotland) and Kevin Young (Emory University, Atlanta, USA).

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Poetry Matters

Poetry Matters is an exciting on-line poetry magazine which provides a fresh, dynamic perspective on poetry issues through a mix of news, reviews and comment.

Emma Jourdan

St Paul’s Girls’ School, London

Evidence

Clinicians must also acknowledge that the lack of definition or integrated identity, or
the inability to have authentic relationships, is negatively correlated to psychological
health.

The problem is none of this adds up to much.

Figure one: black-and-blue dancing,
breathing like there’s nothing inside you,
limbs clinging, clutching the boy
who happens to be there and kissing,
or trying to, pulling back, lifting a hand
to stroke your own soft safety-net hair,
rolling it right down your tight, frightened neck.

Figure two: years and years of waking,
freezing, at two in the morning,
eyes very green but smeared with sleep,
and somebody being there next to you,
all running water and blown-back sails,
moving a hand side to side on your arm
and lips like lamplight, whispering.

Figure three: a girl in a rat-fur dress,
copper in sunlight, burning, pale,
not to be touched.
Who sets you off breaking,
and your skin blind, fumbling, muttering
and arching itself round your mouth and eyes
till you can’t even walk in a straight line.

Evaluation: you begin to suspect
that your tests are unscientific.
That you are asking the wrong questions.
You begin to hear, somewhere in the distance,
the moon, or a bird, repetitively moaning
a shifting half-familiar song.

About Tower Poetry

Tower Poetry exists to encourage and challenge everyone who reads or writes poetry. Funded by a generous bequest to Christ Church, Oxford, by the late Christopher Tower, the aims of Tower Poetry are clear: to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people in education, and to challenge people to write their own poetry. Creative writing should be a central element in literary education, and learning about writing poetry can help students to think about ways of reading poetry.

Publications

The Twelve:

Poems from the 7th Tower Poetry Summer School 2010
Edited by Daljit Nagra and Jo Shapcott
The Twelve contains 56 poems from the 12 young poets who attended the Summer School.