The competition received over 550 submissions, in two age catagories, and the winners were announced at a special exhibition and party at Craighouse Campus on 5th March 2010 – view the video of the event.

You can view more of the wonderful Picture the Poem submissions, and you can read the poems that some of the pupils created, in response to Diana Hendry’s specially commissioned Carry a Poem.

A number of pupils from Gilmerton Primary were inspired to write their own poems too! Napier put together a booklet of their entries – here’s a selection from that publication.

From Calum:

How to Carry a Poem

You can stuff it up your jumper

You can hide it on a plane

You can put it in your hat

Or hide it under mat

You can put it in your gloves

You can hide it in your scarf

You can make it a paper boat

And maybe even an ark

You could write it in a card

Or send it to a friend

You could recite it in your head

Carry it everywhere and it will never end.

You could carry a poem anywhere

Even on a train, now carry a poem everywhere

So it will never end

From Jade:

Carry a Poem

You can tatoo it on your hand
You can put it in your bag
You can put it in a box and on your arm
You can put it in your pocet or a shoe

You can eat it, stik it to your tung
Or put it in your gum and chew on it
or you can put it on your thum

You can put it in your pillowcase
or your sootcase
or a martras
or a biscat.

From Lauren:

Carry a poem

You can put it in your sock
You can put it in your bag
You can put it in you hair
You can put it in your pocket

You can put it up your sleeve
You can put it in your purse
You can put it in your shoe
You can stick it to your hat

You can write it on your arm
You can put it in your bed
You can stick it in your leg
Or you can recite it in your head

From Megan:

How to carry a poem

You can put it in your car
You can put it in your bag
You can put it in your hair
Or in an old rag

You can write it on your hand
You can put it on your stookie
You can burrie it in the sand
Or in a fortune cookie

You can make it into an ice cube
Or swallow it whole
You can put it in your pocket or give it to a mole

From Catherine:

Carry a Poem

You can shove it in your handbag
beside all my gloss
You can bury it in the garden
under all the moss

You can text it on your mobile
or put it in the dogs mouth
or post it in a package
all the way down south

You can give it to the mouse
or hide it in your house
you can squash it in the toothpaste tube
or fold it in a square cube

You can fold it into a box
or disguise it a chicken pox
You can origami it into food
so so so you could

From Josh:

How to carry a poem

You can stick it in your ear
You can stick it up your nose
You can put it in a balloon
Or put it in a bottle
You can rap it round your tooth
Or stick it down your dungrees
You can stick it in your pencil case
Or rap it round your neck and wear it like a scarf
Swallow it and poo it out
(make sure to hold your nose next time you read it)

From Thomas:

How to carry a poem

You can carry it
You can give it a name
You can crunch it up, what a shame

Or you can put in your wallet and purse or you could call a nurse!
You can give it to you mum, then slap it on her bum
You can put it in your pocket then play amazing bop it

You can put it in your shock, then take it around the block
You can put in on your tray, then go out and play
Were ever you go some were your poem will be there.

From Matthew:

How to carry a poem

Flip it up fold it round.
Put it in your pocket
stick it down your trousers
Put it in your bag
Tattoo it to your arm
Or glue it to your face

Put it in your mouth
Write it on your arm
Make a paper airaplane
Stick it up your trouser leg
Put it down your jumper
Stick it in your hood
Put it on your running machine
Put it down your top hold it up and run
Staple it to your ankle
Put it in your toaster and make it nice and crispy!

from Mules

On the great Tibetan
salt route they meet me again

old forsaken friends …

I carry my poetry book, ” Our Nepal, Our Pride,” often because I am a poet with a mission, seeking world peace. I am a  prolific poet and am  writing my own Everest, but my writing is not only about statistics. It is about spreading the message of global peace, universal solidarity and love.

Bhuwan Thapaliya

The new warriors were greeted by characters from the poem and during a busy and productive morning made their own helmets to protect them in battle, created stunning gold torques to decorate themselves, learned how to make wattle fencing to defend their settlement and made clay cups for drinking their mead!

Next they had a great feast before venturing out into the park to learn more about the poem and the landscape of the past. When they reached the summit there was a surprise attack by the invading Angles but our brave warriors stood firm to save the day and on their triumphant return created their own epic poem based on the day’s adventures – here it is:

The Gododdin 2010

I was a brave warrior and fought in a battle with the Gododdin today.

I enjoyed climbing up the hill.

Fourteen new warriors arrived in Mynyddog’s mountain court to drink their mead and train for battle.

Before we started the battle, we had a feast.

On the trip we had a battle.

We were battling the Angles.

We defended Mynyddog Mwynfaur – the wealthy mountain – against the invading army.

It was my favourite part, I got hit in the head!

Fearsome battle cries under bright blue skies!

The Gododdin battle cry made the Angles shake with fear.

But the enemy stood in a line and started to fire.

We were in the middle of a battle. A weapon was thrown, it hit my hand and I suddenly dropped to the floor.

Nearly, I fell, but we still won.

I picked up a weapon and destroyed the enemy.

I won the battle and I defeated the Angles.

I was in a battle with the Angles, I was with the Gododdin and at the end all of the Gododdin were still alive.

Today I enjoyed a battle and we won the battle.

I was in a battle with the Gododdin.

The gods of wind, fire, earth and water did answer our call.

After the battle, I looked up at the sky, it was blue.

Submitted by Craig Fletcher, Historic Scotland Education Officer, on behalf of the mighty warriors.

Ten of the children’s poems from this school were selected and printed into a booklet.  Fiona Hartree from Edinburgh Napier University surprised the children by appearing at assembly and presented the children with their poem in print and their poem framed.

You can see some of the entries to Napier’s Carry a Poem competition here.

My favourite poem is ‘A Potato Clock’ by Roger McGough.  I like this poem because it has a rhythm to it and because it is sort of punny.

I first heard this poem when I was three, at the Edinburgh Book Festival.  My mum and I went to see Roger McGough and I enjoyed it.

After the talk we went to the signings and I got the ‘Sky in the Pie’ poetry book and I loved it!

Hansine, aged 10, Flora Stevenson Primary School

My granny is a octopus
At the bottom of the sea
And when she comes to supper
She brings her family

I picked this poem because it is very funny and it is not true.

from BLACK FRIDAY
Anyone a witness?
Naw, we never saw,
Glad ah’m no’ the pois,
Goin’ tea tell its maw.

I like this part of the poem because it is an interesting part of the ‘BLACK FRIDAY’, I like it when it says ‘Goin’ tea tell its maw’ because I finds that childish and funny at the same it.

Andrea is a pupil at Queensferry High

Roy McEwan – SCO Managing Director

The First World War was a personal tragedy for Wilfred Owen but its transformational power on the maturity and depth of his poetry has given us a rich legacy which I have always found moving. Although this is a bleak poem it is also full of humanity and conveys the transience of human life without diminishing its significance. The intense beauty of these two short verses, while bittersweet, express the importance of human existence and aspirations in the wider and terrifying context of the bigger landscape we are part of.

War and the associated sacrifices are more in our minds now than they have been for a long time and Owen’s expression of ‘the pity of War’ in his poetry has universal relevance – if not something to have in one’s pocket, certainly something to carry in one’s head.

Futility

Move him into the sun –
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds –
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made faruous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

by Wilfred Owen

This is just to say

I have eaten
The plums
That were in
The icebox

And which
You were probably
Saving
For breakfast

Forgive me
They were delicious
So sweet
And so cold.

I like this poem because…..

It is rotten like a letter telling someone that the are sorry for eating the plums and they liked them and they hoping that the owner of the plums would forgive them.