AN anthology of poems ThAT explores the relationships between home, belonging and language.

This collection of poems by young writers at Gearies Primary School aims to remind the reader that our lives are all so different, so similar, and so precious.

100 POEMS FOR BELONGING is one creative output of the year-long project 1000 WORDS FOR BELONGING. The poetry anthology contains verses, words and phrases in over 30 different languages. Some of the languages might be familiar to you, and some might not. The poets have written in languages that they know, and also in languages that they want to know. In writing these poems, the students have discussed what it means to translanguage, sometimes choosing to translanguage between various home languages, the languages of their friends and peers, or their favourite footballers! The poets themselves have decided how much they want to translate for the reader.

The anthology is available to read and enjoy in two formats. You can buy a printed copy of the book in-person at Brick Lane Bookshop for £10, or you can download the digital copy for free here. Copies of the book are also available to borrow from Gants Hill Library and Senate House Library. All proceeds from sales of the printed book will go towards future multilingual arts projects.

The first poem in this anthology is a collective poem, created by Neela and the students. This poem - titled ‘1000 Words for Belonging’ - collates all the words and phrases gathered as part of our ‘multilingual dictionary of belonging’. Please help this poem live and grow. Print it out, re-arrange it, add new words to it, find some errors, correct them, perform it, make it your own, and share it back with us! The collective poem has also been embedded in some new visual art with mosaic artist Maud Milton.

Creating this poetry anthology gave students an in-depth insight into the processes of publishing. Every student in Year 6 contributed one poem for the anthology. The students wrote, read, re-wrote, edited, proof-read, and sometimes even drew their poems. The students also supported the anthology’s curation, contributed ideas for the stunning cover by designer Calixte Davis, and provided words for the blurb.

Publishing a poetry book of this nature takes a huge team of translators, artists, freelancers and teachers. Please do read the ‘gratitude and thanks’ page in the book to see how genuinely epic this team was! Special thanks must go to the writers who came into the classrooms to work with the students, including the poets Anthony Anaxagorou, Nina Mingya Powles and Talia Randall. Their poetry workshops provided such powerful and lasting encouragement to the students, the fruits of which are within these pages for all to see. Thank you also to poets Gabriel Akamo and Helen Bowell who shared their own poetry and poetic wisdoms at our book launch (photo below).

‘100 POEMS FOR BELONGING’ was produced and published using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and a grant from the University of London’s Knowledge Exchange fund.