The Power of Words - Summoning up the Absentees by Michael Rosen

Poem by Michael Rosen to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2018

There are gaps

there are blanks

in the house

of my life

there's a face

nothing more

something gone

from my life

She was here

he was there

in the rooms

of my life

there's a place

for them both

in the words

of my life.

This poem was commissioned by Helen Weinstein, Director of Historyworks. Michael Rosen and Helen Weinstein and her team at Historyworks are working with a wide range of primary and secondary schools to engage young people with the atrocities of the past and to recall missing people in their own words, writing poetry and narratives and songs for this year's theme of this year's HMD which is 'The Power of Words'.