Docking’s 17-year-old Kitty wins national award

Kitty Robinson has won the Rotary Young Writer 2023

Each year Rotary Great Britain and Northern Ireland run a national competition for school children in three age groups; 7-11, 11-14, 15-17 and for the last two years the Rotary Club of Hunstanton and District have run a local round, with a Junior, an Intermediate and a Senior winner progressing to an East Anglia round.

This year the theme was Peace and entries were invited either as prose (up to 550 words) or poetry (up to 40 lines). In total 57 entries were received from from seven schools.

Those chosen as winners from the local round were Verity Snaith (Glebe House School), Max Cawston (St Clements High School) and Kitty Robinson (Gresham’s School). In the East Anglia round Verity was placed Second, Max was Highly Commended and Kitty was the winner. This meant that Kitty progressed to the National Finalist and to the Club and Kitty’s delight she was placed First and hence is the Rotary National Young Writer of the Year 2023.

Kitty with Hunstanton Rotarians Roger Raven and John Crofts

Presenting Kitty with her award, Hunstanton and District Rotary President Roger Raven said: “I am delighted to be here to make this presentation to you Kitty.

“You have done yourself, your family and Norfolk proud.

“Your entry to the Rotary Young Writers’ Competition ‘The Day that Peace Sang’ was so well received that on your entry to the National Competition you were the overall winner.

This is a tremendous achievement, and you should be rightly proud of your award, congratulations.”

This is Kitty’s winning entry:

The Day that Peace Sang (I)

Peace rose its voice

The day the guns began to fade.

And watched its sweet melodic

Notes drift upwards on a breath of

Hope.

A breath of hope which quelled the

Burning angers of this world,

And choked our wicked actions

With a silence -

That day,

The fields of conflict

Were birthed anew,

And flowers grew, where soldiers lay

Upon a ground of fought-on clay

Like crimson blood from seeping wounds

Pooling at the feet of unmarked tombs.

The seeds were blown on that breath of hope.

Coughed into azure smokeless skies

And taking root in hearts and minds

Until the world was singing.

The Day That Peace Sang (II)

Oh,

If only peace had known

What was to come.

That its seeds had planted roots in hearts and minds,

Morphing into fat tumours of

Mourning tears

For the world we could have had.

Mourning tears,

Not blossoms.

For we would not be told,

Could not be told.

Of Vietnam

And Afghanistan,

Of Biafra and Israel,

Iraq, Syria and The Ukraine

And countless more.

Of guns, and bombs

And burning Napalm

Of the tear-blurred piercing

Hatred

Which filled the world.

All-consuming.

Suffocating.

And we were sold a lie,

That peace was ‘indestructible’.

And so the world is crying.