I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire (There’ll Always Be an England)

by Ellora Sutton

            ladies ladies gentlemen
set on fire too much
            land love small lane field
I don’t want to don’t want to
dreaming of
I know
I’m dreaming of          awry
                        million marching wheel
way down deep inside fire
one desire baby
I’ve ambition
            there’s surely
don’t want to set a
don’t want to start a
I just want to be a fire always always
                        while worlds change chains
                        wherever wherever
admission goal I’m in
I me you you               free blue shout too loud
I just start and set great big down
ain’t gonna start no fire
but for you
always

This poem is commended in the Bletchley Park poetry challenge on Young Poets Network (YPN).

So Mayer, who wrote and judged the challenge, said that this poem is a “A swinging mash-up of popular wartime songs from both sides of the Atlantic, by African American male and white British female artists respectively, neatly encapsulating the collaborative war effort – and imagining a soundtrack to some Bletchley nights!”

Ellora Sutton

Ellora Sutton lives in Hampshire, where she is studying towards an MA in Creative Writing with the Open University. She has been published in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, The Cardiff Review, Mookychick, and The Female Spectator, amongst others. She was commended in the 2019 Winchester Poetry Prize; won the 2019 Pre-Raphaelite Society poetry competition; and has been a winner of several Young Poets Network challenges. Her debut chapbook is forthcoming from Nightingale & Sparrow. Ellora is the first-prize winner of the Carol Ann Duffy challenge on Young Poets Network, judged by Mari Hughes-Edwards, and celebrating Duffy's legacy as Poet Laureate. She is also the first-prize winner of Bailey Blackburn's 2018 August challenge #2 on found poems and the third Bloodaxe Archive challenge, The Re-Re-Re-Drafting Challenge. Ellora is also the second-prize winner in August challenge #4 on the poetics of interrogation, written and judged by Foyle Young Poet Kara Jackson in 2019. She is the third-prize winner of the Ode to (Small) Joy challenge. Ellora is commended in: the first, second and fourth Bloodaxe Archive challenges, The Poetics of the Archive, White Space and Take Note; the 2019 and 2020 poetry translation challenges with Modern Poetry in Translation, judged by Clare Pollard; the Mary Wollstonecraft challenge, written and judged by Bee Rowlatt of the Mary on the Green campaign; the moon poetry challenge, judged by Nii Parkes; the Golden Shovel challenge, judged by Peter Kahn; the Bletchley Park challenge, judged by So Mayer; the W. S. Graham challenge judged by Rachael Boast as part of Graham’s centenary celebrations; and Ankita Saxena’s protest poetry challenge, remembering 100 years of the women’s vote in the UK.