It has been a tremendously successful couple of weeks for Queenswood’s creative writers.

Earlier this month Ada Carmody-Kingham (Year 11) learned that her poem, ‘And Love’, is to be published in Grindstone’s 2017 Anthology.

This week, we received the news that nine members of the school’s Creative Writing Club have been chosen to have their work published in an anthology put together by Young Writers after their ‘Stranger Sagas’ Contest. Congratulations to the following girls on their tremendous acheievement.

• Manon Ludwick, Year 11
• Natasha Chanda, Year 7
  
• Natalya Symeou, Year 7
  
• Amelia Evans, Year 7
  
• Asha Karia, Year 7
  
• Sophia Evans, Year 7
  
• Amber Smith, Year 8
  
• Abby Stevenson, Year 8
  
• Sofia Wu, Year 11

Ada explains how her poem came to be published:

• Miss Walsh (Teacher of English) asked me to enter some poetry competitions, considering how I was writing a lot. I entered the 2017 Open Poetry Competition, and I got the results back a couple of months later saying that I had achieved 5th place overall, which was pretty exciting. Apparently it was because of how short it was: “Poetry should always be an exercise in ‘how can I say this with fewer words’,” is what they said to me. I find this awesome because I don’t have much of an attention span when it comes to writing. I’m honestly surprised how I got the place, considering it was less of a structured piece and more of a late night musing, but I guess people like ambiguity in all forms!
• Towards the end of January, I got another email asking if they could publish my poem in Grindstone’s 2017 anthology of best work – also pretty cool – and I said yes. The anthology is available to order now, and there’s lots of good stuff in there, including winners of competitions and writing tips, so I really recommend it!