You might recall last year when incredible Maori poet and writer Apirana Taylor visited Hornby High School to share some of his work; in fact, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop hosted by Apirana with the other English Scholarship students.
Today in English, as we get back to the gist of things after lockdown, we actually did the same warm-up that inspired the poetry from the blog post linked above. I like to think my writing has improved over the past year so I took this as an opportunity to look back at my poem from April 2019 compared to one I wrote over a year on.
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| Last year's poem, I immediately cringed |
"Party at the End of the World"
There is a whale emerging from rumples of azure;
Mahuika from a sun of fire.
On land, someone's sister waves a white flag - not of surrender, but of strength.
In Christchurch a clock ticks,
in a room so very quiet you can hear the breathing of souls doomed from birth.
And only in the end,
whether it be in a hail of bullets,
or a room so cozy to mask the haunt of chemo,
might we be able to look at the trees around us and realise the beauty of it all.
Looking back there's definitely a huge improvement between then and now, at the time I was super proud of my poem and couldn't imagine doing better, a year later and I have definitely done just that. Maybe in another year's time, I'll look back at this blog post and think 'why did 15 year old Jaime think this was good?!' - in fact, I actually really hope that happens.
P.S Here's a photo showing the actual process of writing this poem, when I'm inspired I write so fast to just get words out and my handwriting often gets really messy just like this. Re-reading and editing often takes more time than actually getting words on the paper.
