5 Variations on the Theme of Pasta
By Elsa Yuan, seen here in English 10 Literary Arts, circa 2015
By Elsa Yuan, seen here in English 10 Literary Arts, circa 2015
Well done to all who entered, for your hard work and creativity!
A special congrats to Tate Hussey and Miranda Madsen-Orr, who have qualified as finalists! Over 600 students across the country entered. Miranda and Tate are two of the ten finalists in their age category. WOW! Congratulations!
Category: Grades 10-12 Age: 16 From: Vancouver, B.C. School: Lord Byng Secondary School Character: Richard III From the play: Richard III Topic: Donald Trump's presidency
The year is 2016. The country is torn by civil strife. Police roam the streets hunting young men. The country’s factories lie idle while a hopeful dictator waits in the wings.
Enter Richard J. Trump III, Duke of New York
This is the season of loathing and anger
The age of diminished belief
This is the dawn of a well-traveled path
To a new commander in chief
[Aside]
’tis a time for men of boastful deceit
When money’s to be had for claim
From the pockets of those who toiled and lost
To men with billions to gain
Hear me you poor and humbled men
I direct you to witness the stain
Of foreigners darkening our every door
And our country groveling in shame
[Aside]
Much do they mock me – those high-minded fools
Mock my tiny hands and hair
But I will avenge every remark
When I perch at the White House chair
Long have you waited, you people of Walmart
While the world passed you by with distain
For the chance to strike at the bankers of Wall Street
And the woman who speaks in their name
[Aside]
The bigger the lie the further it travels
I tweet fictions deep into the night
Till those losers devour every slippery word
And absorb fake news with delight
It is a time to wall out the strangers
Tell the world this is our land to claim
To bury science beneath the weight of religion
And Make America Great Again
Category: Grades 10-12 Age: 15 From: Vancouver, B.C. School: Lord Byng Secondary School Character: Caesar From the play: Julius Caesar Topic: 2016: The warmest year ever
What sight!
To look upon these deeps and bounds,
and see them bow.
What mighty kings are we!
For every scrub, every petal, every paw,
to lay their brow upon our soil
and cry out:
Mercy!
Oh! and how we battle for this grip on greatness,
holding hurricanes down with rope and chain,
fighting wildfire with but knuckle and bone.
How clever are we?
to have turned mother earth onto herself.
From our shining hand
births every crack webbing across the wild,
and when it shatters,
We will use its shards as gems in our crowns.
Such power!
That even the mighty sea,
in all her foaming rage,
drags herself across the sand
to lay eyes upon our divine hands,
that create divine machines,
great enough that even riptides must succumb.
It is these hands
that reach into the night,
and tangle the strings holding constellations in the sky.
Our hands,
who may rip the head off
even the lion,
so the blood may rouge our cheeks,
and smear across the the sky,
hazing the world in crimson.
Such glory!
To play with the hues of oxygen.
We are gods!
And no knife may puncture our breast,
for it is forged in iron.
We are gods!
Who may burn the earth red hot and raging,
just to make shade a little sweeter.
We are gods!
And for that the earth must bow.
English Courses Flow Chart 2017-2018
created by the brilliant Ms. Yeung
“Who farted?” Miranda asked. “It stinks in here. Who?” she repeated. “Who? Who? I said that it stinks in here.”
“Who farted?” Nina asked. “It stinks in here.”
“Who farted?” Meg sniffed the air. “It stinks in here.”
“Wowee!” said Miranda’s friend. “You’re right! It really does stink in here.”
“I did it,” admitted Lawrence. “I’m sorry. I had a really big lunch.”
“Oh gross,” sighed Malcolm.
“Yuck.”
“Ew.”
“Ew,” repeated Ms. Liao.
“Must have had beans,” Kira said kindly.
“Ms. Liao, can you smell that?” Miranda called out.
Ms. Liao remained silent, plugging her nose.
“Let’s punish him!” Nina called out. Nina was always quick to punish others.
“Let’s hang him out the window,” Miranda suggested, trying to be helpful but not really succeeding in doing so.
“We can all just forgive him,” Meg suggested.
“That’s too kind. He stank up this room and all our lives have now been shortened because of this gassy smell. Like, seriously.” Kira turned to Lawrence and glared at him. “Lawrence, you need to be punished!”
Merlin mumbled to himself about his lost worksheet.
“What are you saying back there? Be quiet!” Ms. Liao snapped. She was sooooooooooooooo mean.
TOOT! Onomen let out a bigger, stinkier fart than Lawrence. She always wanted to be NUMBER ONE.
An Eternity
Inspired by Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”
The boy was astonished. Three hours early for a flight; this was ridiculous! He had expressed his concern to his grandfather, who had arranged for the wait, that he would “die of boredom; an hour is an eternity, let alone three!”
His grandfather merely shrugged and replied: “if an hour is an Eternity then you have a lot of time on your hands. The time will pass before you know it.”
The boy was annoyed and looked up at the clock, checking his time left stuck in limbo. There was still an hour left in the terminal, the clock showing the time of 3:03. Looking at the timepiece the boy began to count the remaining moments: “53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, and 60.” The boy looked to his grandfather, attempting to figure out why his grandfather found his time in purgatory so exciting, but his grandfather was merely looking out the window, examining the outside. The boy followed his grandfather’s gaze, and surveyed the outside and watched the cars pass: a red one, a black one, a white one, and another black one. The boy looked back to the clock, and sighed at the sight of the distance between the hour hand and the 4 o’clock position.
The boy lay his chin upon the table before him, closing his eyes and listening to the clock. Clocks don’t really go “tick, tock,” he thought, more of an “ik, ock; is there a particular style of clock that goes “tick, tock”? The boy looked over at his grandfather, now immersed in a newspaper, and recalled the large grandfather clock that is in the main room of his grandfather’s home, its constant “docking” often being the only sound which permeated the otherwise still silence of the old man’s dwelling. Why, the boy started to question, are they called grandfather clocks anyway? The boy’s mind desperately attempted to solve the problem it had been presented: maybe it’s a tradition; some old men gathered together and decided to pass on giant clocks as heirlooms? With a few more moments of deliberation, the boy dismissed the thought as unlikely, his mind citing the unlikely nature of a large enough group of grandfathers having the funds to afford an expensive antique, especially before pensions, hundreds of years ago.
The boy, failing to find another reasonable explanation for the nomenclature of a particular set of clock, quickly grasped onto another topic. Hundreds of years ago, his thought began, when there weren’t many, if any, clocks, now were events arranged? The boy thought of the constant updating of availability with his school friends. Would one be able to, in the time before clocks, arrange any event that lasted less than several hours? The boy considered his knowledge of the time before clocks, recollecting the tales of medieval fantasy and the little they learned in school. His knowledge of events outside of the typical larger scale affairs were surprisingly limited, even considering his finite information; with this in mind, and a few moments of consideration, the boy decided that the cliché festivals of earlier eras were likely, in part, due to the lack of timepieces to arrange more precisely timed events.
The nearby wrinkling of paper distracted the boy from his musings, and, when the boy’s eyes opened, he was surprised to see his grandfather standing beside a folded newspaper, a hand on his luggage. One eternity was finished, the first of many.
Written by Alex Puddifoot