From this year’s ‘Love Letters to London’ writing competition, sponsored by Almacantar, Footwork and Stiff+Trevillion.
Full details of the winners and runners up are here.
You can buy our printed booklet of all of the winning and placed entries here (£6.50 for members, £7.50 non members. P+P included). Or you can get the PDF version to download here.
If you’d like information on the next ‘Love Letters’ competition, enter your details here, and we’ll be in touch later in the year.
Kezia Atkinson
This is London
The rushing
click-clacking
Of the train;
an eager
monster
of
mechanised
metal
Consumes my thoughts.
Strangers’ faces,
illuminated by
glowing
blue
lights
surround me.
Their eyes glued to
Shiny screens; their only focus
I look around,
Bored,
From outside I see
the stations
pass
by,
Some glossy and modern,
others old
and
brick.
They each have a story.
A small girl in a threadbare coat
stands at St Pancras,
Waiting for her Mother.
She smells the same smells
as me,
Of hurried people and
stale air.
Next and
next and
next,
the light of the phones turn to
the
pale,
frightened
faces
of evacuees.
I hear the shouts of Suffragettes,
Green,
White,
Purple,
Freedom.
Football fans spill out,
the colours of their team
waved
about madly,
crowds of red faces
flood the station.
Everything
goes
so
quickly.
Past,
Future,
Present.
All unexplained worlds.
Now back,back,
I stare pitifully at those around me,
they
do not
know what they have
missed,
they do not know
London
like
I
do.
Then,from beneath the
swirling clouds of grey,
the sun shines,
glinting
on the
curling Thames,
lighting up the faces
of the strangers
with a
new light.
They look up,
awakened.
They smile.
I grin back.
This, is London.
