Friday 23 January 2015

Giving the Killing Fields New Life

Elizabeth Rose MurrayElizabeth Rose Murray blogs as the ‘Green-Fingered Writer, living for adventure and word’.

A poet and short fiction writer, she is currently away from her base in Ireland and in Tanop, Cambodia where, as a volunteer English teacher  at the Singing Kites School, she has persuaded several girls to write their first verses in English.

Here is the simply terrific:

“Our Worries

“I worry…

about my exams and if I will fail,

if I’m absent from school then my study isn’t good enough,

about my eyes because I always use the computer on the weekend,

that my brain gets tired when I study so much,

when I go home at night, my bicycle will get broken,

about riding my motorbike on the road in case there is an accident

I will hear ghosts in the dark,

that when I go home there is no rice and I’ll be hungry,

for my brother in Korea because he is working with machines – it is very dangerous,

about not having money because I cannot study or buy things like *leashal,

that I make mistakes every day,

about not having enough water and the world getting hotter,

my face and skin is not white enough”.

* Murray explains that leishal are tiny clams, covered in salt and chilli and cooked in the sun.

© Natalie Wood (23 January 2015)

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