Meet the Harton Academy pupil who has become a published poet

McKenzie Davies, a Year 9 pupil at Harton Academy, has already had two of his poems published following success in national writing competitions.

His poem, ‘Our Warming World’, appears in Young Writers publication ‘Through Their Eyes’ which invited students aged 11 to 18 to write a poem from someone or something else's point of view.

Another of McKenzie’s poems has also been published in book ‘SOS Sagas: Missing - The Search Is On’ after entering a competition run by Young Writers.

A third poem by McKenzie’s called ‘Show Racism the Red Card’, is also due to be published in a book called ‘A Poetry Odyssey - A collection of Verse’ in 2021.

His success follows comes after winning the the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize for Young Writers earlier this year.

The annual competition held at The Customs House, South Shields, was set up in memory of respected writer and former Shields Gazette journalist Terry Kelly, who died in 2016, aged 57.

The Kelly family wanted to celebrate his life and love of poetry by encouraging young people from across the region to write their own poems.

Harton Academy executive headteacher, Sir Ken Gibson said: “We are all incredibly proud of McKenzie’s exceptional and rare talent and were delighted to hear of his marvellous success in having a number of his poems published.

“He is a delightful young man and I hope he continues to produce such wonderful work”.

McKenzie’s poem, ‘Our Warming World’, which appears in ‘Through Their Eyes’

The world is warming, the world is crying

Every creature, thing and man is dying

We tried our best to no avail,

To live much longer, we may have to bail.

We still have a chance but not for much longer,

We will take to the stars and start to wonder,

It was going so well but once and for all,

The story always ends with a massive fall.

To find a new home and wave goodbye,

It’s our planet and we will try,

Our world is falling and falling fast,

Any of our breaths may be our last.

If we live past the massive disaster,

We will save our world or it’ll fall even faster,

No matter what you do is ‘the ways of men’

We all have a few years left less than ten.

The problem with that, are the people of greed,

Our cities will fall and their people will bleed

The only way forward is to fight,

So we can help everyone and it’s going to be tight.

Our planet may live but we could die,

Burying its secrets, and for years will lie

The governments and armies may be strong,

At the end of the day what they do is wrong.

Fight for yourself and see what you do,

While the rest of the world die from flu,

If we somehow manage to pull through,

The only people left may be me and you.

We think we’re in control but we’re really not,

The options we have are not a lot,

But all we need is a little time,

And we could save our planet and be quite fine.

Our options are short,

We need to abort,

As the world will end if we don’t change,

What I’m going to say may sound strange,

We undid ourselves and destroyed our home,

I hope this will get to you my final poem.

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