Friend

An unforgettable collection of poems by young people, edited by the award-winning writer and teacher Kate Clanchy.

I text you how much it hurts not to see you.

Here are poems about love, loss, mothers, fathers, God, rain, and growing up. About all the things that poems always are about, in fact, with one crucial difference. Instead of being remembered from an adult distance, these poems were written by a diverse group of teenagers direct from their own experience. So as well as being clever, funny and moving they are also immediate - they go straight to the heart like a text from a friend.

Most of these poems are by pupils from a single multicultural comprehensive school, Oxford Spires Academy. Many have already been social media sensations: Linnet Drury's poems, for instance, have been retweeted over 100,000 times. All the poets have been paid for their poems.

Friend: Poems by Young People has been edited by the award-winning poet, writer and teacher Kate Clanchy. A previous anthology of her students' work, England: Poems from a School, was published to great acclaim in 2018.