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Josephine Corcoran - Stephen Lawrence isn’t on the National Curriculum
edited by Jody Porter

Stephen Lawrence isn’t on the National Curriculum
by Josephine Corcoran

I tuck you in
with long ago & far away,
pull the blanket of it wasn’t us, it wasn’t
here, around your heart although I know
that five inches is 13 centimetres,
that 130 yards would cost a lot
of blood. There’ll be Rosa Parks
& Martin Luther King for homework,
there always is & someone saying it’s good
we teach them that,
but no-one has a map of south east London,
today your teacher didn’t say his name.
I teach you this: he spelled it with a ‘PH’
not a ‘V’, in 1993
he was eighteen,
he wanted to be an architect,
he was waiting for a bus.

Josephine Corcoran is a writer, tutor and parent. She runs the poetry blog And Other Poems: http://andotherpoems.wordpress.com/

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