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A local student has won a competition with her reflection on how the pandemic touched her life, captured in a poem with a twist.
Harriet Palfreyman, from Year 9 in Jersey College for Girls, took first place in the KS3/4 category of the Girls’ School Association with her reversible verse entitled, ‘This year has changed me.’
JCG sixth former Naomi Balderson also saw success in the competition, being listed as a runner-up in her age category.
The GSA competition’s theme was ‘What have we learnt from the pandemic that will influence our lives tomorrow?’
Harriet said she wanted to write something “that reflected both the challenges that we have faced during the last 12 months, but also something uplifting and hopeful, as we look to the future.”
Pictured: KS3/4 Winner Harriet Palfreyman and Sixth Form category runner-up Naomi Balderson are both JCG students.
To do this, she decided to do something a bit different – writing a poem that can be read both forwards and backwards, with each reading taking on a different meaning.
Harriet said the structure aimed to “display how for each negative of the pandemic, there can also be a positive that can change one’s life for the better. I hope to convey in this poem that in years to come, our experiences during the covid-19 pandemic can be reflected upon as something that we, as a society, can learn and grow from.”
Speaking about her writing process, Harriet explained that she needed to “consider each set of lines carefully, ensuring I added the correct punctuation to allow the reader to understand the meaning of the words in both directions.”
“The order of words was also crucial to ensure that sentences worked and I could build a sense of negativity, but also, in reverse, a sense of hope,” she added.
On her win, she commented: “I was really surprised and delighted to be informed that I had won the poetry section of the competition. The next stage was to record myself reading the poem; this allowed me to put the correct rhythm and pauses into the poem to convey the meaning as I had imagined it.”
That recording was then featured at the GSA’s Headteachers’ Conference, which Harriet described as an honour.
Harriet performs her winning poem:
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