Posies and poems
© Rommi Smith, BBC Artist in Residence for the Commonwealth Games 2002

Children across Lancashire wrote poems about their favourite places in their hometowns, as part of Northwest Tonight's poetry competition to mark the Queen's Jubilee. Five winning entries were chosen and the five children who wrote the poems will have the opportunity to present posies to the Queen.

Facing north
New hands
Draw time

Words are thought,
Captured in moments,
Photo album of lines

Of here and now and
Where and when
Framed for the price of a postage stamp

Imagination is a bird
With the twig of home
In its mouth

Passing over
The landscape of language
A patchwork of locations
With new voices
Announcing the names

Take out this measuring tape
And measure the pictures of sentences
Where shades of home and heart
And textures of memento and meaning
Blend to create bud, bloom and beginning

Take a small voice and amplify it
Tune the ears of general public
Turn the speakers North, South, East and West
And listen to bright thoughts encompass
A distant horizon
Somehow say it all