* Like an 8-series it clicks from gear to gear.
Imagination. Vision of life.
Backlog of data, stored within each of us.
Blue. Like the river of the Amazon. Its fast-flowing current Dragging along the tiny vessels that once came across its path.
* If it were a sound, it’d be the sound of a flute, Its enchanting harmony enough to make the most hostile yield.
Or yet, it could be like a nuclear bomb.
Once it explodes it leaves its mark on everything - forever.
* Full of contradictions, the imagination, like silk is soft to the touch.
But it’s powerful enough to build dreams, which you base your life upon.
Like a dove, your imagination floats in the sky.
What do the clouds look like? Come down and tell.
Do they look like a face, your face, or the face of a lover?
* Working on a 24 hour basis the imagination comes alive at night.
While you rest with nature’s great nourishment the projector is hard at work Showing you a vision of the past, the present and future.
What were you like when you were a child?
What’ll you be like in a few years, a month, a day?
Come out of your cinema and tell me.
Showkat Ali, 14, St Luke’s school, Southsea, Hampshire
We celebrate the imaginativeness of children, mourn how it gets knocked out of us as we grow up. Yet how often do we fail to distinguish - as Coleridge did - between the “fancy” and “imagination”, and encourage young people to be merely “fanciful”, summoning up dragons and monsters, strange and unlikely creatures in topsy-turvy landscapes, as if imagination were a kind of nonsensical thinking? Showkat Ali shows us what it really is: sensuous, dangerous, visionary. I admire the strenuousness of thought in this poem, the ease of the language. What makes the poem leap alive are the imperatives: “Come down and tell”, “Come out... and tell me”. In a game of hide and seek, metaphors and similes give glimpses, but it’s when imagination calls through our own mouth that we discover the power of imaginative speech.
MIMI KHALVATI
Showkat Ali receives Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times, edited by Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney (Faber). His poem was submitted by Sue Teece. Mimi Khalvati is TES guest poet for the autumn term. Please send poems, no longer than 20 lines, to Friday magazine, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1W 1BX. Include the poet’s name, age and address, the name of the submitting teacher and the school address. Or email: friday@tes.co.uk
