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Apr 2021

Last Updated: 19/04/2021

Community

Ripon Grammar School seeks escapist pandemic poems

by Tim Flanagan

| 20 Apr, 2021

Poetry has proved therapeutic for some people during the covid lockdown and they could win a prize with their verse.

ripon-7th-july-2020-ripon-grammar-school-scaled

Ripon Grammar School, which is one of the schools set to benefit from the county council's carbon funding.

Ripon Grammar School (RGS) is seeking poems of the pandemic for its annual poetry challenge.

With the theme of "escape" the search is on for rhyme that have helped to reduce anxiety and provided solace during the covid lockdown.

Students, parents, past pupils and the wider Ripon community are invited to enter.

The Hullah Poetry Competition was launched in 2014 and attracts hundreds of entries every year.

Judge Dr Paul Hullah, a past pupil of the school and now professor of poetry at Tokyo’s Meiji Gakuin University, explained his choice of theme for 2021.

He said:

“The last year has been difficult for all of us. We’ve had to work out new ways to live.

"We’ve all done our best, but enforced isolation, our new 'indoor existence', has not been easy for many of us.

“A lockdown limbo land of restrictions on movement has been a psychological as well as physical challenge we have all had to try to overcome.

“In such stressful, testing times, it’s important to find ways actively to reduce anxiety.

"Art — of which poetry is a fundamental form — can represent a welcome escape from the prosaic reality of our situation.

“Whether we’re producers of art, or consumers, or both, creativity stimulates the imagination and exercises the mind, inspires and elevates us.

“Whether it’s a Netflix binge watch, a video game, a fantasy manga, a favourite tune, a musical, a ballet, a book… or a poem, art offers us a meaningful exit route — dramatic, fantastical, and joyous — from the daily actualities in which we find ourselves, a temporary respite from the workaday mundanities that give life a regularity but are lacking in emotional release.

“Art is a medicine that soothes, and liberates: ‘Go anywhere, without leaving your chair’, as the song says.

“So, this year, the task is to write a poem of fourteen or more lines that somehow connects to the concept of ‘Escape’. Any poetic form, rhyme scheme or narrator is allowed.”

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Entries should be submitted you via email by Friday, by 16 July to Mrs Mars at marsh@ripongrammar.com. Prizes will be awarded in two categories.

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Ripon Grammar School seeks escapist pandemic poems

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