KES pupils enjoyed a poetry exchange with pupils from Mukwashi Trust School in Zambia recently. This excerpt is the letter from Mrs Stokes to their school. You can read all the poems on the links below…
Dear learners, teachers and everyone at Mukwashi Trust School,
Thank you for sharing your poems with us here at King Edward’s School in Birmingham for a second year. Once again, it was a pleasure and a privilege to read your work. Once again, we felt the fears and the yearnings that your words bring to life. Once again, the vivid worlds that your poems explored made us think more carefully, more critically, more joyfully about the roles that dreams play in our own lives and cultures. Dr Brown, Mrs Faulkner, Dr Romon-Alonso and I had a passionate discussion during our judging sessions as we compared and shared our appreciation of the poems – and the dreams – that you have so generously shared with us.
One of the most famous poets from Birmingham was a man called Benjamin Zephaniah. He passed away just before Christmas in 2023 and he is a writer we think about a lot in Birmingham. One of his most inspiring attitudes was that he believed poetry is for everyone and that everyone writes poetry even if they do not write it down. “Language,” he once said, “is power, and in a more fundamental way, poetry is power.” I think we all understand the power of poetry, we have all been moved by a song, sometimes to tears and sometimes to dance. I believe that every poem that you sent to us proves Benjamin Zephaniah right about the fundamental power of poetry. There is something in the harmony of word and sound that speaks to us and each of your poems spoke to us in different ways.
We loved the images of birds, bridges, seeds, designs, glue, frogs and farmers. These moments transported us to what Elizabeth Makwamlimba calls, the magical place of ‘night-dreams’ where ‘we see things differently’. These poems dream of a better tomorrow where equality is a reality and where the impossible strays within reach. These poems are a plea to keep dreaming, otherwise, in the words of Bridget Kawana, ‘life becomes a broken-winged bird which cannot fly’.
Your poems also warned us of the ways in which we can become the victims of other people’s dreams and ambitions. In this way, dreams can become the prisons that hold us back and crush our spirits. What inspired us most is that we can still find great hope in the power of the young voices that proudly speak these poems. These voices refuse to be afraid of the truth, they demand our attention and our thought and we will remember them for a long time.
We want every single poet at Mukwashi Trust School to know that King Edward’s School hears your voices, and we hope the power of your poetry continues to go further out into the world, to encourage, inspire and challenge new audiences. Please keep writing, keep speaking and keep dreaming. We cannot wait to find out where your poetry will take us next.
Mrs Hosanna Stokes, Teacher of English, King Edward’s School
KES Winning Poems as judged by Mukwashi 2025
Mukwashi’s Winning Poems as judged by KES 2025
