A DROITWICH teenager named Worcestershire’s Young Poet Laureate for 2017 has spoken of the importance of poetry today.
Oakley Flanagan, from Hanbury, was officially unveiled as the young poetry wordsmith for the county at a grand final event held at The Hive in Worcester.
As the sixth young person to be awarded the prestigious title, Oakley will not only be paid to write and perform, but will act as a champion for poetry to encourage and inspire other young people, write poems to celebrate special events and perform at community events.
The 19-year-old, who studies at The Swan Theatre School in Worcester, said: “I’m so grateful to be the Worcestershire Young Poet Laureate for 2017, there were so many great poets who competed and it still hasn’t quite sunk in yet that I get to be the next person to continue the legacy.
“Poetry is more important now than ever and I’m thrilled to be given the gift of this year’s tenure to have my voice heard.
“Thank you to everyone at The Hive in Worcester and the WordUp team for championing young people. I can’t wait to get started.”
Oakley was selected as part of the annual county-wide search by Worcestershire County Council’s Libraries and Learning service to encourage young people to engage with poetry and find a talented young person who can both represent the county and inspire others through poetry.
Steve Wilson, County Arts Officer said: “Oakley is a wonderfully exciting and well deserved winner of Worcestershire’s Young Poet Laureate.
“His commitment to poetry is evident and he is both an accomplished and exciting performer and writer, that will inspire others to have a go at producing their own work.”
Below are Oakley’s winning poems ‘A Message to my Father’ and ‘Business as Usual’.
A Message to my Father
by Oakley Flanagan
dad
1.
whenever i try and speak to you
you never actually end up saying
anything to me
unless you’re drunk on rum
and talking about rock ‘n’ roll
then you talk for hours
but even then you’ll never talk to me
only at me
2.
your daughter has perfected the art of your small talk
and she can steal whole fistfuls of your soil
cramming them deep into her pockets
she’s saving them for one of the bad days
where she’ll ration out a portion of your love
to quieten the graves in her ears
you dug for her when you decided to eat your tongue
3.
when i’m away and call home
and mum will put you on the phone
but i don’t know whether or not
she’s hung up on me
and when i call back later
my call goes to answerphone
4.
when i’m back home
and it’s bad
the silence screams loud
at the dinner table
and the words we do say to one another
are as hollow as our manhood
a message to my father
Business as Usual
the winds will change
the tides will turn
the papers will predict the worse
at first we’ll blame God
and then terrorists
who’ve finally succeeded
in turning the sky against us
the names of hurricanes will chill parental bones
mother’s will whisper them into the ears of their young
like childhood monsters
the waters will withdraw
from Britain’s banks
will churn and circle
like a pack of ravenous wolves
fighting over the last bone
before they burst their banks
reduce cities to myth
and still
we won’t be convinced
we will live in the solitude
of our newfound sovereignty
our buildings reaching higher than God
soaring like Icarus in the glory of our new empire’s sun
we will look to the screen
so we don’t hear the planet’s cries
the prophets will rage on street corners
the poets into pages of digitalised poetry
kindle killed paper
because man killed the trees
suited men cowered in underground bunkers
will promise worthless coins and an overnight stay
to the prostitutes they f**k
research papers of disgraced postgrads
will be vindicated
pass into platitude and proverb
no one will enter a building without an escape plan
the oceans will boil like kettles
and curdle to milk
as landmass
returns
to the sea
words such as freak
extreme
unexpected
and unprecedented
will become
obsolete
those foolish enough to swim in the oceans will blister and crack
burned by the sulphur
the few natives and tribesmen left alive will die of the water
those too poor to afford gas masks will die of the air
crops will drown
villagers perish
food will be grown in chemical soil
then starvation rations will become the solution to overpopulation
ice will burn
to gas
fires will break out spontaneously
and burn the forests starved by drought
the children will soak up the view with terrified eyes
the first words of the newborn
uncurling itself between the bloodied legs and effluent
of its mother will be
is this the future you left us?
and still
amidst all this chaos
we will not blame ourselves
or the part that we have played
collectively to total the sum
of this ravenous destruction
so it’ll be business as usual in Britain
we will frack and burn and bleed
unmoved by the destruction
of Nature prostrated on her knees
shouting curses to the pylons
that murdered all her trees
this our mountainous inhumanity
to feed our insatiable greed
