CREATIVE WRITING
Creative writing
F rom PG Wodehouse’s flights of fancy to Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled fiction; from the poetry of Jon Silkin to the contemporary young-adult fiction of Tom Pollock, many and various are the imaginative works of writers educated at the College. These pages contain a small selection of writing produced by current pupils over the course of the past year. We have chosen to feature at least one writer from every year-group, showcasing a range of genres from poetry to science fiction. Some of the work was accomplished during creative writing sessions held at lunchtimes or after school, such as the weekly WordSmiths sessions, open to boys in the Lower and Middle Schools, or the Joint Creative Writing Workshop, a collaborative venture involving Upper School pupils from both the College and the Charter School. Other pieces were written at home. What all of this writing has in common is that it has been produced without intervention, correction, or improvement by teachers. This is the boys’ own work, showing their creativity, originality and experimentation. We start with a story by a Year 8 writer, George Bichard. ‘Future’ was written during the Michaelmas term at a
WordSmiths session focusing on opening lines, and is the first chapter of what he hopes will be a whole novel. Year 13 writer Harry Goodwin’s post-modern short story, ‘Tension’, was inspired by a painting by Edvard Munch, the stimulus material at a Joint Creative Writing Workshop in the Lent term, and Year 7 pupil Kit Parsons’ Michaelmas term short story, ‘Silence’, was also written in response to work by Munch. Seymour Hine (year 9), Sam Gordon Webb (Year 13) and Jack Probert (Year 11) won praise from novelist Ali Smith for their short stories linked to the theme of ‘Winter’; all three were commended by the novelist in the Michaelmas Term Southwark Schools short story competition run by Dulwich Books, with the awards ceremony held in the Auditorium in November. Finally, we feature work by four talented poets: Ned Wildgoose Bulloch (Year 10) a loyal attendee of the WordSmiths sessions, and three Year 13 pupils — Tyreece Asamoah, Thomas Whittaker and Zak Asgard. We hope you enjoy, and are inspired by, these pieces of verbal craft. Might these boys form part of the next generation of Alleynian writers? Judge for yourself.
Jo Akrill
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