The school of life

For thousands of refugee children, going to school in their new country can be a bewildering, isolating experience. But at Reads Editor Cyan Turan’s alma mater, a special poetry group gives these pupils a creative outlet

Many years ago – when Brexit didn’t dominate the headlines, Kim Kardashian hadn’t posted any nude selfies and nobody knew what a hashtag was – I was a pupil at Oxford Spires Academy (OSA), then Oxford Community School.

In my time, the school was one of the most multicultural in the country. Not much has changed. In fact, the many refugee families – from war-torn countries including Syria and Afghanistan – settling in the area have only served to enhance the school’s ‘melting pot’ reputation. Now, 20% of pupils are white British, with the remaining 80% hailing from countries large and small, far and near – from Lithuania to Brazil.

My stint there was longer ago than I care to remember but when I heard about a new poetry book, England: Poems From A School, written by its migrant and refugee pupils, I was immediately transported back. But while my memories of school are primarily of dreaded PE lessons, Bunsen burner ‘accidents’ and the heady ‘glamour’ of prom, these students have been through experiences of an entirely different colour: one writes of hiding under a bed from approaching soldiers, another of struggling to remember the taste of dried dates from a market in Bangladesh. In a poem called Silence Itself, 17-year-old Rukiya Khatun talks of feeling alone, and fearing others pitying her loneliness.

Classrooms and playgrounds aren’t easy places to be, especially if you’re considered ‘different’, but at OSA, according to writer in residence Kate Clanchy, the diversity means that ‘there is no one culture, no single idea of what a school should be’. The students in her poetry group range in ages from 12 to 18 – but the talent that emanates from every syllable of the verses seems far more sophisticated. As you’ll see from 14-year-old Ftoun Abou Kerech’s poem, The Doves Of Damascus, exclusively extracted below, these poems paint stomachpunchingly vivid, emotionally mature and often harrowing pictures of life in a land far from home. England: Poems From A School (Picador, £9.99) by Kate Clanchy is out 14th June

THE DOVES OF DAMASCUS

I lost my country and everything I had before. and now

I cannot remember for sure the soft of the snow in my country, I cannot remember the feel of the damp air in summer. Sometimes I think I remember the smell of jasmine as I walked down the street.

And sometimes autumn with its orange and scarlet leaves flying in the high Damascus sky. And I am sure I remember my grandmother’s roof-garden, its vines, its sweet red grapes, the mint she grew in crates for tea. I remember the birds, the doves of Damascus.

I remember how they scattered.

I remember trying to catch them.

Ftoun Abou Kerech (14)