Friend

by Kate Clanchy

I text you how much it hurts not to see you. Here are poems about love, loss, mothers, fathers, God, rain and growing up. About all the things that poems are always about, in fact, with one crucial difference. Instead of being remembered from an adult distance, these poems were written by a diverse group of teenagers direct from their own experience. So as well as being clever, funny and moving, they are also immediate – they go straight to the heart like a text from a friend. Most of these poems are by pupils from a single multicultural comprehensive school, Oxford Spires Academy. Many have already been social media some students' poems, for instance, have been retweeted over 100,000 times. A donation from the sale of this book will be made to the charity Asylum Welcome.

128 pages, Paperback

Published April 20, 2023

About the author

Kate Clanchy was educated in Edinburgh and Oxford University. She lived in London's East End for several years, before moving to Buckinghamshire where she now works as a teacher, journalist and freelance writer. Her poetry and seven radio plays have been broadcast by BBC Radio. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper; her work appeared in The Scotsman, the New Statesman and Poetry Review. She also writes for radio and broadcasts on the World Service and BBC Radio 3 and 4.

She is a Creative Writing Fellow of Oxford Brookes University and teaches Creative Writing at the Arvon Foundation. She is currently one of the writers-in-residence at the charity First Story. Her poetry has been included in A Book of Scottish Verse (2002) and The Edinburgh book of twentieth-century Scottish poetry (2006)

Reviews

[Werka]

nie bede oceniac, poniewaz wiersze byly roznych poetow
wiele bardzo mi sie podobalo
nie wiem czy chcialabym by moje wiersze z okresu jak mialam 12 lat byly publikowane, ciekawe jak ci poeci patrza na to z perspektywy czasu