For World Poetry Day, we are sharing the 3 winning entries to our creative writing competition, ‘Then & Now ‘ Each poem is introduced by comments from Camilla Reeve, Founder of PALEWELL PRESS
Kinsugi The Story of Then and Now
by Ahed Aljondi
I put this poem in first place because it feels delicate and hesitant – as if the writer is searching their heart for truth and only gradually discovering it. There is something about that mood which resembles the experience of migration – constantly hoping, searching and then seeking to understand what has been found. The poem contains some beautiful half-rhymes,
Kinsugi, The Story of Then and Now
When they ask me
what it means
to begin again
I don’t talk fast
Some things ar too sacred
for quick answers
The poem charts an emotional journey from Then to Now with the fifth verse as its turning point:
And yet
In the quiet
Between the breaking
Something starts.
The second half of the poem is more hopeful. But its last verse reminds us that life goes on and the story is still being written.
When they ask me
what it means
to begin again,
I don’t talk fast.
Some things are too sacred
for quick answers.
I say
it’s like being broken
by your own name.
Like forgetting the shape
of your soul.
You’ll walk alone
through rain that never stops,
carrying silence like a second skin.
You’ll cry in the day
and pretend it’s just the wind.
You’ll lose
the voices that raised you,
the smell of your mom’s bread,
the rhythm of your native tongue.
Even your shadow
will look like a stranger.
And yet
in the quiet
between the breaking,
something starts.
Not loud,
but like the first bud
after a long winter.
You’ll rise
not as you were,
but as something new.
Gold in your cracks.
A bowl once broken,
now more beautiful
for being made whole again.
You’ll learn
to build from ash.
To speak
with the courage
of a soft voice.
To hold love
without asking permission.
You’ll gather fragments
a kindness from a stranger,
a job with no judgment,
a hand reaching
when yours had gone numb.
These are your threads.
You’ll sew them
into a life.
You’ll fall in love
with yourself,
with your freedom,
with your quiet strength.
You’ll live again.
You’ll laugh again.
You’ll become again.
This
this is then and now.
A bridge of memory and will.
A story of absence
and presence.
And like all beautiful things,
it’s
still
being
written.
Rule 35
By Michael NDoun
Michael’s free verse “Rule 35” has intriguing rhythms running through each verse. Reading them out loud accentuates this. It is definitely a poem to be performed in front of an audience.
The poem addresses the theme of Then and Now but very differently. In his passionate indictment of the way that UK Home Office staff implemented Rule 35, we see hope turning to despair. After more than 13 weeks, Michael is let out of detention. But some experiences leave emotional scars as damaging as physical one.
Rule 35
Rule 35:
They call it Rule 35: a number in a system meant to save lives,
but mine was slipping silently
through bureaucratic hands,
like dust ignored in the corner of a prison cell.
I write this not for glory,
but because I am still here
an ex-detainee,
a survivor of pain stitched into silence.
A body scarred not just by the past,
but by the indifference of a country
that claims to stand for rights.
They examined me in Dover
not like a man,
but like a case file:
another ghost with trembling hands,
with eyes lost behind horrors
no report could rightly translate.
They said I was a victim of torture.
A doctor confirmed it.
Rule 35 was issued.
That was supposed to mean something.
Supposed to ignite justice.
Instead,
my cage remained sealed,
the bars welded
with the rust of disbelief.
Rule 35: a lifeline twisted into a noose.
Three articles,
three cries for help:
if you are sick,
if you want to die,
if you carry torture in your bones
report it.
But silence lives in the mouths
of those who should speak.
The GP did not write.
The official did not read.
The system did not care.
In 2019,
five cries of suicide made it through.
In some centres, not even one.
The rest?
Muted.
Ignored.
Erased.
My own pain
branded on my skin
was weighed against policy.
My scars debated
like a myth,
as if pain could be forged
without fire.
I swallowed pills.
Not to die.
But to finally be believed.
Only then did they notice:
not the man
but the liability.
A solicitor appeared,
face soft with truth.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
And with a single call,
I became human again.
Thirteen and a half weeks of slow unravelling
led to four impossible words:
“You are a free man.”
But freedom is not always release.
Not when
your mind still paces the cell.
Not when
Rule 35 becomes a monument to failure.
Not when
laws meant to protect
become walls that confine.
Every year,
they lock up the broken,
the trafficked,
the tortured
and call it policy.
In this kingdom
of clipped tongues and clipped wings,
we do not ask for mercy.
Only to be heard.
To not be disbelieved
because survival doesn’t look like
the script they wrote for us.
Rule 35:
your ink may fade
but we,
the voices it ignored,
are rising.
We are the faultline.
We are the rupture
in your polished doctrine.
We are not ghosts.
We are the living memory
of every time
you looked away.
I’m here now
by Iulia Anna Kryshta
This poem draws the reader in because the emotional journey from Then to Now is fluid. We are shown migration forcing the poet to grow in strength and confidence. But Iulia also feels compelled to travel back along the path of migration, trying to answer unresolved questions about identity and belonging. The most memorable verse is the 5th one that shows migration may be a never-ending process:
I’m here now
I’m here now. I’m alive.
This much has changed.
I still dream of the fields, of my house and my cats.
Could I go back? I doubt it.
Not so much there is left.
I still think of the times when war was only in papers.
I still dream of the times when the siren was silent,
When the people I see were the ones I knew long,
When I knew where I was, where I was one of us.
Now I’m foreign, and I guess it is making me strong.
I’m here now.
I believe I belong here as well.
And refuse to give up.
I will strive and compete.
This new land, all the people,
I learn all the time,
Something new that brings me closer to being complete.
I refuse to surrender to sorrow and pain,
To the hardship that being a refugee gives us all.
Tomorrow is always becoming today,
And my future is here.
Or wherever I go.
I confess to assuming it’s best where we’re not,
Where the greenest of grasses is building up jealousy.
But when the choice is made after having no choice,
My life back in Ukraine was much closer to fantasy.
Here and there, I am different.
Just not the same.
And the difference goes from the inside out.
I don’t know yet what’s real, and what’s more like a game,
But this life’s opportunity is building me now.
