untitled

The Observer | 01. 1 0. 17 | THE NEW REVIEW 35

trampled on ... a place where old ladies

would water jasmine trees at dawn.”

After four years, the family moved

to England as refugees, settling in

Oxford where Amineh and her two

siblings – Ftoun, 14, and Mohammad,

11 – now go to school. At Oxford

Spires , a multicultural academy in

the east of the city where more than

30 languages are spoken, the two

sisters joined a workshop led by the

Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh. That’s

where they met Scottish author

Kate Clanchy , the school’s writer-in-

residence since 2009, who has been

nurturing Amineh and Ftoun’s talents

at weekly classes.

When I speak to Clanchy at the

prize giving, she marvels that Amineh

has been speaking English for only a

year. “Some of my most amazing writers

lost a language at an early age,” she says,

“in the sense that they arrive suddenly

in England and are no longer able to tell

stories and make themselves powerful

in that way. It can turn them in on

themselves. But I also think they have a

special capacity at that age to produce

really unusual rhythms and sounds in

English, which makes them into really

interesting poets.”

This year’s judges, the poet Rachel

Rooney and Observer cartoonist

Chris Riddell (until recently, children’s

laureate), agree that Amineh’s poem

stood out from more than 2,000 entries,

drawn from schools across the UK

and the Republic of Ireland. “I found

it really moving,” says Rooney. “It was

passionate and complex. She was asking :

‘How can I do myself justice through a

poem? How can I create a homeland on

paper?’ And then she was actually doing

it. Amazing.”

“It addresses a contemporary issue

that’s been breaking all our hearts,” adds

Riddell. “It has a solemnity to it, but also

the profound view that you get through

a child’s eyes. It stands up as a poem, in

any context.”

Though it’s named after a most

English poet , the Betjeman prize has

been showcasing diverse voices since

it was set up in 2006. The perspective

here is global – one of Amineh’s

fellow fi nalists, 10-year-old Shanelle

Furtado , evokes her grandparents’

home in Mangalore in six v ivid haikus –

and it shows that adults are not the only

ones with important and timely things

to say.

When her poem won, Amineh look ed

stunned, then buried her head in her

hands and wept. A moment later, as her

family gathered round to congratulate

her, she was beaming.

“It’s a surprise for me, like a dream,”

her father tells me afterwards. He never

imagined his daughter winning a prize

like this: poetry doesn’t run in the family.

“I used to write simple things, but after

the war, after the hard time that we had,

we didn’t think that we needed to write

anything,” he says. “We survived.”

At the end of her poem, Amineh asks,

“Can anyone teach me / how to make a

homeland?” Although the future of her

birthplace remains gravely uncertain,

there are consolations to be had in her

new home. “I feel so happy here because

I have a future and things won’t be scary

any more,” she tells me. “Everything will

be good,” she adds, “and we will always

be in peace.”

“I take words from anywhere,” says
Amineh Abou Kerech , moments after
winning the 2017 Betjeman poetry prize
for 10- to 13-year-olds last week. “I take
them from songs and fi lms, from what
I see on the computer or the television.
And I put them all together.”
She makes it sound so simple. It’s
anything but, according to her older
sister Ftoun , who is smiling at Amineh
across a pub table in London’s St Pancras
station. “She sits in her bedroom all the
time and practi ses, practi ses.”
Amineh, who was born in Syria 13
years ago, nods. She started writing
poems during the four years her family
spent in Egypt, but since moving to
England last summer, with a new
language to master and a new culture to
get to grips with, she has been working
doubly hard on her verses.
Her prize winning poem, Lament for
Syria , was written half in English, half in
Arabic, and translated fully into English
with help from her sister, her teacher
and Google Translate. At the prize giving,
which t ook place on National Poetry Day
last Thursday, next to the statue of John
Betjeman at St Pancras , she read the fi rst
part of it in English before switching to
Arabic at the words “I am from Syria.”
Amineh was eight when they left.
The civil war had begun a year earlier,
in 2011, sparked by the Arab spring
and kindled by disaff ection towards
the Assad regime. Her family lived in
Darayya, a Damascus suburb known
as a centre of anti-government protest.
When violence fl ared up, Amineh’s
parents Tammam and Basmeh fl ed
the city with their young family. They
moved around for a year, sleeping
wherever they could fi nd shelter, until
remaining in Syria was no longer viable
and they escaped to Egypt.
“In Syria, all the time we were
scared,” says Amineh. When they
settled in Cairo, despite the fact that her
family had lost everything (her father
had owned a shop in Damascus selling
fabric) and were living in the most basic
conditions, Amineh’s fear abated. She
began writing poetry, she says, as a way
of putting her dislocation into words.
“When I remember my Syria I feel so
sad and I cry and start writing about
her.” She tells me she doesn’t remember
the country very well, though her poem
suggests otherwise: it is, she writes, “a
land where people pick up a discarded
piece of bread / So that it does not get

A year after learning to

speak English, Syrian

refugee Amineh Abou

Kerech, 13, has won this

year’s Betjeman prize.

She t alks to Killian Fox

A homeland revisited only in verse

POETRY

‘Suzy Klein reveals how

music became a weapon in

Tunes for Tyrants’

TV, page 40



How did the idea of a poetry pharmacy

come about?

A friend, Jenny Dyson, came up with

the idea. At literary festivals, I’d set

up in a little tent with a couple of

armchairs and a prescription pad

and see people for 10-minute slots.

We had prescriptions printed that

would include things like: “Take the

poem but don’t operate machinery

afterwards.” I thought it would be no

more than a bit of a gimmick – but it

really took off. People would queue

and, three or four hours later, I’d not

be fi nished. I had spent my life trying

to get poetry out of “poetry corner”

with National Poetry Day , the Forward

prize... but many people remain

intimidated by poetry; there is this

sense of a slim-volume elite. I wanted

people to drop their fear of the P-word.

How did you conduct your sessions?

I would ask lots of questions. The

fact that people have come does not

mean they are willing to open the door

to a stranger. Sometimes, they’d say: “I

don’t know why I’m here, I don’t have

any problems, my life is great.” Those

were the people who often would be

crying within fi ve minutes.

What was the most common problem?

Loneliness – exacerbated by social

media.

You explain in your introduction how a

poem once unexpectedly came to your

rescue?

It was Ambulances by Philip Larkin.

I had this extraordinary experience.

I was about to cross the road when

someone stepped in front of me

and was hit by a car. I found myself

pumping his heart, giving him the

kiss of life – amazingly, his heart started

beating again. An ambulance came,

the police took my statement.

Apart from blood on my hands, I had

a poem in my head – the startling poem

in which Larkin refl ects that all streets

will eventually be visited by an

ambulance. The people who see the

body carried away  and say “poor soul”

are whispering at “their own distress”.

But how was this comforting?

It was not reassuring, but it off ers

complicity. Poetry is not a lullaby. Poems

help you feel you are not mad, that

what you are going through has been

experienced by others. Take Re cension

Day by Duncan Forbes. His poem will

not mend your broken heart, but it will

help you wallow.

Wallowing can be just what the doctor

ordered. You also prescribe poetry as a

spur to pursue dreams. You write: “People

can spend entire lifetimes putting off the

risks that might make them happiest.”

What is your greatest leap of faith?

Blimey! The biggest is getting married.

No one tells you when you’re young

that it’s the most important decision

you will make in your life.

You are married to fi lm-maker Molly

Dineen – ever prescribed a poem for her?

No [laughs].

You prescribe a striking number of poems

by mystic Persian poets Haf ez and Rumi...

Persian or Iranian people say: “We

don’t need a pharmacy book, we have

Hafez.” Written 700 years ago, their

poems have depth, range and relevance.

Poetry is crucial for continuity. We live

in a world of terrifying immediacy and

uncertainty. It is hard to protect our

fragile psyches from assault. There are

no easy fi xes, but that is why we turn to

poetry. Pursuing truths is worthwhile:

the cupboard you thought was full of

snakes turns out to be full of dust.

Kate Kellaway

The Poetry Pharmacy: Tried-and-True

Prescriptions for the Heart, Mind

and Soul is published by Particular

(£14.99). To order a copy for £12.74

go to guardianbookshop.com or call

0330 333 6846

MEET THE AUTHOR

William Sieghart

Publisher and philanthropist William Sieghart is the force

behind the Forward poetry prize. After the publication of his

anthology, Winning Words (2012), he has come up with Th e

Poetry Pharmacy, a ‘self-help book for life, using poetry’.

s how

apon in

ts’

Lament for Syria

by Amineh Abou Kerech

Syrian doves croon above my head

their call cries in my eyes.

I’m trying to design a country

that will go with my poetry

and not get in the way when I’m thinking,

where soldiers don’t walk over my face.

I’m trying to design a country

which will be worthy of me if I’m ever a poet

and make allowances if I burst into tears.

I’m trying to design a City

of Love, Peace, Concord and Virtue,

free of mess, war, wreckage and misery.

*

Oh Syria, my love

I hear your moaning

in the cries of the doves.

I hear your screaming cry.

I left your land and merciful soil

And your fragrance of jasmine

My wing is broken like your wing.

*

I am from Syria

From a land where people pick up a discarded piece of bread

So that it does not get trampled on

From a place where a mother teaches her son not to step on an ant at the end of the day.

From a place where a teenager hides his cigarette from his old brother out of respect.

From a place where old ladies would water jasmine trees at dawn.

From the neighbours’ coff ee in the morning

From: after you, aunt; as you wish, uncle; with pleasure, sister...

From a place which endured, which waited, which is still waiting for relief.

*

Syria.

I will not write poetry for anyone else.

*

Can anyone teach me

how to make a homeland?

Heartfelt thanks if you can,

heartiest thanks,

from the house-sparrows,

the apple-trees of Syria,

and yours very sincerely.

Amineh Abou

Kerech: ‘In Syria,

all the time we

were scared.’

Photograph by

Antonio Olmos

for the Observer