Somerset Anne Frank Awards creative writing competition winners

The Anne Frank Awards creative writing competition was held for the second time this year. 

Participants had to write something based on the Anne Frank quote: "what is done cannot be undone, but what we can prevent it from happening again". 

The awards evening was held at Brendon Books, Taunton, on Thursday, June 29. 

Author Angie Sage judged the winning entries and presented the prizes. 

There were three age categories that could be entered. 

The winners were: 

10-12 years - Ben Armstrong from Creech St Michael C of E Primary School. 

His entry: 

One day good

One day bad,

Death looking for you,

Dream as long as you have,

Dream until your final breath.

Watching the shadows looking for you,

Getting scared the closer the closer they get,

Then they go.

The stars shining,

Like your eyes in the dark,

The bookcase, your only hope,

The stars, your only freedom,

Kitty, your only trusted.

The betrayer,

The Gestapo,

Closer and closer they came,

Then you’re found,

Pray,

Pray,

Pray for God’s help,

Closer,

Closer you’re coming to be one of those stars.

Your last words,

‘What is done can’t be undone, but we can prevent it from happening again,’

Let us pray she’s correct.

13-15 years - Eleanor Clark from King's College Taunton 

Her entry: 

The ink was crumbling to dust; the places the ancient nib had jarred forming tiny meandering breaks

in the running river of time, and it was brown and smelt of the cart track down Cheriton Hill, when

the dust rose high in the mist after rain.

Particles danced like fairies when she turned a page, with adoring delicacy and a throb of longing. The

air was full of the very essence of humanity mingling across ages, space closed between by her gentle

fingers.

The field poppy in a jam jar on the windowsill leant against its friend, a sumptuous cornflower, resting

together, exhausted from the effort of redemption. She vowed to the poppy, as something more real

than a supposedly symbolic piece of paper pinned to a lapel in a lonely service at which only the

remembered were blessed. Even the molecular structure that built its sweet nectar, was grown of the

Earth.

Plucking the poppy from the jar, and watching the water from its stem wash about on the varnished

wood, impermeable, she closed the fragile pages of the book.

The French landscape lay before her, unfolding its undulations down from the window, and over the

corn-field, to the west where the vineyards grew, and the Marne river, flowing silent and slow beyond

it all.

Fruits sank heavily into the ground as they fell from trees in the orchard, rocking the rope of a wooden

swing hanging precariously, neglected, from a branch. Each low thud like the clumping of boot nails

across the muted earth, ruptured and shredded of its wealth in the heat of battle. The country rolled

away unchanged, until the last stile and the bend in the long white road. There the tranquillity ended

and the blades of grass bore the scars of the past, and the swish of the wind carried footsteps and

whispers of the long-dead. War country.

She went back to bed. Dreamt.

She fell at His feet, or where they would have been, if He was five feet eleven, like the book said. The

poppy clutched in her hand did not droop, but the black spots crinkled like crepe in a mourning dress.

Whispering Wilfred Owen in a lilting, lurching voice, she pledged every breath to His eternal rest. As

though He understood, she sensed the phosphorescent light break over the gravestone head, and

knew that God would pardon, if mortals would not.

A death bell from a country steeple formed the last perplexing images of the dream, before it faded

red and black, like blood, and Devonshire earth, like the bullet that ended Him, like ink in His book.

He had not deserted them, his hallowed comrades, and was not cowardly or futile. When He took His

final journey and pressed His spine against that post, facing the barrel of the gun, was He a coward

then?

The brittle, damp-spotted paper of the book blew open in the wind. She smiled.

“Dulci et decorum est pro patria mori. Never again, Grandfather.”

16-18 years - Edward Buckton from Bridgwater and Taunton College

His entry:

What is done cannot be undone,

But rivers flow through forest dens children have made.

What is done cannot be undone,

But sunlight washes concrete builds in earnest gold.

What is done cannot be undone,

But vines sponge old tracks, pulling them to decency.

What is done cannot be undone,

But stones lie engraved, a grave, times marked misguided.

What is done cannot be undone,

But trees are rooted where bodies lay in damp heat.

What is done cannot be undone,

But Bergen-Belsen barbed wire rusts; it’s buried, now.

Scholars learn victim’s hardships, teaching, subduing.

What is done cannot be undone,

But we can prevent it from happening again.