(Posted 7:30 a.m., April 26)
Colonel By poets' work included in Gloucester Spoken Art anthology
By Fred Sherwin
Orléans Online

Colonel By poets Amber Gordon and Matt Francis hold up a copy of the Gloucester Spoken Art Society's Instant Anthology which contains two of their poems. Fred Sherwin/Photo

For the past five years the Gloucester Spoken Art Society has encouraged budding poets at Colonel By Secondary School by including some of their work in an Instant Anthology.

This year two students managed to get their work included in the collection of poetry put together by Gloucester Spoken Art founder Asoka Weerasinghe.

Amber Gordon is a Grade 12 student who specializes in writing narratives. About a month ago her creative writing teacher Angela Evans challenged her to write a poem. At the time she was reading a book by American poet Diane Ackerman which contained an exercise to write a love poem without using cliches.

"It was around the time things started warming up and I was sick of winter and happy that spring was coming, so I wrote a poem about my general love of the world and nature," says Gordon, who read her poem during the Gloucester Spoken Art Society's meeting at Cafe Margit on Sunday.

Gordon spends the majority of her spare time writing prose and when she's not writing she's reading. "I usually only write poems when they're assigned to me. My poetry folder on my computer is very small," she says.

"She's far too modest," says Evans. "Her imagery is fantastic."

Gordon plans to go to the University of Victoria next fall where she has been accepted into the Faculty of Fine Arts for writing.

Matt Francis is also a Grade 12 student at Colonel By and is Gordon's polar opposite when it comes to writing poetry. He started writing poetry in Grade 6 and has developed his craft to the point where he produces at least one good poem every two weeks.

"I'm always writing things down, but as far as poems go I'll get a good one about once a fortnight," says Francis, who usually shares his work with his teacher and two close friends.

The poem he chose to read on Sunday and which was selected for the Instant Anthology is entitled "Cain", about a street prostitute who sat beside him at a train station during a visit to Caen, France. The poem is filled with imagery in describing the women to the reader.

"It something that stuck with me and I wanted to share with other people," says Francis when asked where the inspiration for the poem came from.

The full text of both students' poems follows...

Untitled by Amber Gordon

If a winged horse were to sit
At the base of my soine, and
Then proceed to beat
And beat
And beat
Its wings gusting 'neath my belly
Why, then, that's love

It's bubblung hysteria, like
The first scent of spring
Spring in my steps;
like the spring of the turf
As it squishes beneath my foot
It's euphoria, like sweet pure juice
Cool over the tongue

If I heard music fill my limbs
As if it were water, and I
A vessel to be filled fully
Then I would dance,
My body full of music
Like a cup holding water
What is that, if not love?

"Cain" by Matt Francis

Auburn hair and thread-thin arms
Blue eyes and burn scars
A pretty young girl now going to hell
She's a junkie as if you can't tell.

Beaten and raped her mother dead since her birth
No pain where she is but the girls knows how it hurts
Weed by eleven carack and meth by fourteen
She's a whore but I don't say it to be mean.

Begging for money none left to buy food
She tries to survive and she tries to get by
It's the drugs that sustain her but slowly she'll die
She crawls in the streets, she screams and she cries
She's already dead, a predetermined fate
All she is now another body for the street
Her body kicked by unaware feet.

(This story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our local business partners.)

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