Kent College’s Amelia Peto, 14, was delighted when she discovered she had won first prize in the Live Canon’s National Poetry Competition in the category for Years 10 to 13.
Amelia’s poem, ‘Our Latticed Lives’, will be published in the 2018 Children’s Anthology which will be available for purchase nationwide. Together with receiving a copy of the anthology, Amelia has been invited to a celebration and prize-giving ceremony at the Greenwich Theatre in London, which will give her the chance to meet other winners and hear inspiring poetry from keynote speakers.
Our Latticed Lives
The truly free have flown where they please.
Feathered feet follow where the wind has blown
For freedom is fractured, a ceaseless tease.
Dipped wings grace the lake, reflected with ease,
By the light of that luminous dome.
As the truly free have flown where they please
Latticed lives that we lead, this the bird sees
That we scuttle in the brown earth, laid prone.
For freedom is fractured, a ceaseless tease.
If those who fly are free, why do the bees
Always stick close to their honeycombed home?
Haven’t the truly free flown where they please?
For freedom’s a siren’s song, sung with ease.
By finding it, we lose it, worked to bone
For freedom is fractured, a ceaseless tease.
But birds leap away, drifting on the breeze
We watch, while we are trapped to bitter stone
As the truly free have flown where they please
For freedom is fractured, a ceaseless tease.
