Esther and Jamal – Future Poet Laureates?

London Brookes College is proud to congratulate Esther Davis and Jamal Nokoe on their recent success in the Young Writers Poetry Trials competition. Esther and Jamal, two talented young writers, submitted their poems for the nationwide Young Writers Competition.

Esther’s poem, The Man In The House, is a poignant, powerful and technically impressive piece of writing. Through a clever technique of repetition of real
interrogatives and rhetorical questions, Esther manages to make her reader ask deep and chilling questions about contemporary social ills and domestic abuse. When the reader is confronted with the opening line.”Isn’t your house meant to be your safe zone?”, Esther’s subtle associative reference to “war zones” immediately makes us realise this will be a poem that does not shy away from tough subjects. Esther uses strong imagery and metaphors as her poem exposes the destructive results of family life gone wrong.

Like many great poets, Esther manages a remarkable twist or volta with her final stanza. Rather than limit itself with merely evoking extreme sympathy in the reader, Esther’s final stanza invigorates and surprises as the voice of the poem tells us that “She refuses to be a victim”. Esther’s incredibly personal tone is magnetic and the reader is left transformed by this accomplished exposé.

“Poetry:the best wordsin the best order” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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