Winner of the Olivia Hurton Prize Announced

Last term the hugely popular House Poetry Composition Prize returned for its second year, with pupils across the school putting pen to paper to write on the theme of ‘Duality’. The shortlisted entries were pored over with delight by poet Olivia Hurton, an Oxford Academic and Editor-in-Chief of Bluestocking Oxford. All the prize-winners of the Olivia Hurton Prize for House Poetry Composition will feature in the school’s annual Cat Among the Pigeons Magazine. A warm congratulations to Pearl G, the overall winner, whose poem was described by the judge as ‘raw and heartfelt writing, a plea to look beyond beautiful surfaces’.

Duality

by Pearl G 3JP

She looked so flawless,
So alluring and bright.
Her figure was slim;
She shone in the night.
Her lighting was perfect,
Blemishes? None.
But something was wrong;
She seemed inside, undone.
Her eyes held no light,
And vaguely was seen,
A man in a hood
His hands stiff and unclean.
She shifts with discomfort,
Helpless as can be,
But she covers it well;
Only the insightful could see,
Her cautious movements,
Mistaken for grace,
Her secondhand clothes,
Mistaken for lace.
Inside, she is gone,
She desires to be free.
From this we can learn,
Things are not always what they seem.