I’ve got a bit of a meta poem for you today! To be honest, I woke up a bit early, sat in bed and thought ‘what am I going to write about?’. I had some work to do and some little bits and pieces to tidy up, but then I sat down and just wrote. This is what happens when I let words just leave me and enter a screen, apparently: some sort of commentary on the actual process and impact of writing itself. Maybe it’s because I’m in a small room with the curtains drawn, so there’s not much else for inspiration – who knows? In any case, I hope you enjoy this poem!
Category Archives: Poetry
Take Me With You
This poem appeared in OUCH! Mag’s fifth issue, Galaxy, and it definitely fits within that starry theme. But it’s not just about space and aliens, although those elements are definitely within it. I tried to create a deeper story behind the simple want to live among the stars with strange beings from other planets, and I hope that comes across in my writing. Rather than just hope and curiosity, some more negative emotions lurk beneath the stanzas, but I think they all contribute to the overall image: not wanting to be left on Earth when you could be taken anywhere else in the galaxy.
Dear Oskar
No, I didn’t just address a blog post to myself – instead, I wrote a letter-poem to myself! This piece is themed around my lockdown experience, with highs and lows of how life has been. It came runner-up in the Telegraph’s Teen Writing Competition and I’m really proud of it.
Thoughtless
To be clear, this poem is not an attack on my classmates (and not-exactly-classmates, as I’ll discuss) or the bus driver who diligently gets us to college and back in the mornings and evenings. Instead, it is a discussion of the many failings which occur when you force two year groups from two colleges (four year groups in total) onto one bus during lockdown and COVID restrictions. Think of it more as an expression of emotion, rather than a formal letter of complaint – and enjoy!
Tender Choice
I decided to write this poem about the choice between summer and winter and the different types of beauty they both hold. Personally, I find myself switching between which one I like more pretty often (Autumn is probably my favourite season just for being a comfortable in-between). I hope you enjoy the poem!
Flutters Of Memory
This is actually a poem which I wrote for the FOURALL Magazine Spring Internship Program as a Creative Writing Intern, and it was featured in FOURALL Magazine’s sixth issue. I’m pretty proud of it, so I thought I’d post it here too. The poem focuses on memories and draws off of some of my fondest memories with old friends. I hope you enjoy it!
A Childhood
This is a poem which I wrote during FOURALL Magazine’s fall internship program. I wanted to explore ideas of childhood and very specific elements of it, while acknowledging that these concrete details aren’t universal. I hope you enjoy reading A Childhood!
Grey Eyes
Time for a break from the short stories! Get ready for an emotional little poem I wrote called ‘Grey Eyes’, where I experimented with the formatting a little through indenting (completely inspired by my recent studies of Christina Rosetti in college, by the way) and really focused on the placement of the words within the poem. I hope you enjoy it!
The Smokers
With this poem, I’ve attempted to translate the everyday into something a little more poetic. Unusually (at least for me), I put a lot of effort into creating a rhythm for the words, rather than just letting the words flow and seeing how they end up. The first line swam through my head during a day in college with such a particular sound that I couldn’t help but be captivated by this normal yet morbidly beautiful idea. Thus, this poem was created. You can read it now!
Cliff
I’ve got a relatively short but poignant poem prepared for you today! Cliff takes the physical image of a cliff and twists it into a metaphor so that it stands for the self–in this case, my self. At only two stanzas long, it’s definitely not one of my more wordy pieces, but it was written at a fairly thoughtful time in my life and rereading it has conjured up those same emotions and thoughts I was experiencing then. It was interesting, at least, and I hope you find reading it just as interesting!
Oskar Leonard 