Kye Purcell Conboy
Empowering poems by two teenagers at a Derby specialist school have been chosen from thousands of others to be published in a poetry book.
Kye Purcell Conboy, 16, and Aisha Russell, 15, wrote the poems during an English class at The Kingsmead School’s Castle Education Centre with teacher Kat Christopoulos.
It was part of the national Young Writers competition with the theme of “empowerment”.
Castle Education Centre is a Hospital Medical School. Pupils require a medical referral from a consultant and a mainstream school referral in order to attend. The referral can be due to physical needs, but is often due to complex mental health conditions which has made mainstream school attendance difficult.
The two teenagers chose to spend their class penning the powerful poems, Kye’s called Tired, and Aisha’s No. They impressed their teacher so much, she encouraged them to enter them into the competition.
“What really impressed me about these poems were how Kye and Aisha managed to express so much in so few words,” said Ms Christopoulos. “Their choice of words and how they played with poetic language was so clever and the finished poems were both powerful and moving. I am so proud of them.”
Ms Christopoulos entered both poems into the competition last October.
“I got a letter in November, before the deadline had even closed, to say that the judges were so impressed with both poems, they had selected both to appear in the book, out of thousands of entries, even before the competition had closed,” she added.
The poetry anthology, called Empowered, has now been published and is available online.
Ms Christopoulos said: “Both Aisha and Kye were shocked when I told them their poems were going to be published and I know how much it means to them.”
Kye said: “I hope that at least one person picks up the book and decides to start writing because of it.”
