By Eithne Cullen
Welcome to Thoughtful Tuesday’s page for October. When I thought of October, I had a few things pop into my head: Black History Month, National Poetry Day and dredged somewhere from the back of my mind…the October Revolution! So with Evolution/Revolution in mind I pulled the ideas together and asked our writers for their revolutionary thoughts. Powerful liberation images have come through, as well as some fabulous poetry.
The first piece I’m sharing is from Ellie M Blake. It’s a story about the stand her grandmother took, quite a revolutionary in her own way. Special thanks to Ellie for sharing this very personal piece.
The Girl Outside The Classroom
K sat outside the classroom, not in trouble, nor for misbehaving. As the eldest, her duty was childcare. She listened and learned without a desk, books, pens, or paper.
“Why is it the boys can go?” she asked her mother. “I won’t look after my brothers and sister any more, unless I can have an education too.”
K won the battle, and attended school for several years. When my grandfather came to choose a wife, she was the only girl in the Chinese village who could write her name.
At 18, she left everything she knew to live in Malaysia, where she gave birth to 13 children and survived the horrors of World War II. One particularly harrowing day, when the Japanese came to their town, she fled as gunshots rang out. Bullets showed no mercy to neighbours and friends. How does one forget that?
These weren’t like the dry facts filling my history textbooks. They touched me as fragile truths. My father shared these tales in fragments, usually in the evening after the dishes were washed and his mood turned reflective. Back then, I didn’t understand why they mattered. He may have missed her, or believed there was a lesson for me. Perhaps I misremember them, or they’ve been reshaped by his retelling.
After my grandfather’s passing, my grandmother’s visits to Australia gave me the chance to spend time with her. With apple cheeks and curvy hips, she practised tai chi in the morning. In the afternoon, at my uncle’s house, she gave us pink disc-shaped sweets called haw flakes. She read the Bible and newspapers, glasses perched on her nose. On Sundays, she went to church and savoured an occasional block of Cadbury’s chocolate.
Years later, in London, I’m reminded of her during breathwork and balance exercises. I message my father about a Chinese song she taught me, which I can still sing. He says it is about a flower that is so beautiful with all its petals in bloom.
As summer fades, October returns with its restless melancholy, the hush broken by gusty winds. The anniversary of her death draws near, followed a week later by her birthday.
My grandmother was the unwavering matriarch. Her insistence on schooling was a quiet revolution, a ripple carried forward through her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who now live and study around the world.
Earlier this year, in a workshop on public speaking, I had an epiphany.
Through waves of tears, I recounted my recollections of her and realised, yes, I am driven by my love of books and hunger for learning. My parents instilled values and raised me. Teachers nurtured my skills in language and literature. But the resolute spirit of my grandmother anchors me.
Defiance is my inheritance. Courage, my compass. The determination of the girl outside the classroom – she is the reason I write.
© Ellie M Blake, 2025
Connect with Ellie on Instagram and TikTok: @mycreativeeveryday
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Amber Hall told me that, for her and for many others, the revolutionary act might not be overtly political or obviously rebellious, but comes through the way we use our words. Remember the old adage: the pen is mightier than the sword? Well, Amber has shared two poems which reflect that message.
Ouroboros
We’re supposed to pick a side
Blindly, with no regard for the one truth there is:
That life is full of complexity
That nuance, shades of grey, exist.
It isn’t gallant, this warring of words
On the streets and online
Both sides biding their time, so that each can say
See, it’s me, I’m the one in the right.
It’s not the progress you think it is.
I’ve long since put such thoughts of grandeur to bed
And instead:
I pick up my pen like a swordsman
Make my mark, make it clear
But always willing to lend an ear
No one has all the answers, we forget.
What else have we got, when X marks the spot,
When we’re bound to ideas not each other?
Our words carry weight, and they incite debate
They give space to the questions unanswered.
Yes, I’ll carry my sword, in spite of the noise
Observe and weave words, seek the truth.
Let my writing take flight, not succumb to the fight
Ouroboros, self-destruction, consumed.
© Amber Hall, 2025
Writing Is A Quiet Rebellion
Stories fall from the clouds
Find their roots on the ground
And spread, like a ripened olive branch.
Hear the story, know the context
Words make waves, make protest
Pen poised, hands open, truth beckoning.
Listen. Let it sink in.
Allow the noise to settle again
For writing is a quiet rebellion
But no less mighty – mightier, in fact
Pen to paper: a statement, an act.
© Amber Hall, 2025
Connect with Amber on Instagram: @amber.marie.123
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Our own Pen to Print writer Mirabel Lavelle has become a revolutionary in her own way, too. Here’s her story, telling how she became an activist and advocate for children with allergies. Her journey has her to publishing a book, appearing in the media and visiting schools to talk about the subject.
My Allergy Safety Awareness Revolution
Our lives change. We change. We evolve.
After I witnessed paramedics fighting to revive a baby from anaphylaxis, I knew I had to do my part in helping others to prevent it. Its impact changed me forever and I evolved into an allergy safety campaigner.
I started by writing articles to spread the message of awareness to the largest growing disease of the immune system among babies and children in the UK. The most impacted group of sufferers is children under ten. Statistics and Figures | Allergy UK | National Charity. Someone must speak on their behalf. Hence my mission.
After a child experiences anaphylaxis, parents/carers have to learn fast. What has caused it? How to avoid it? How to shop and prepare food safely? How to keep their child safe outside the home? The psychological impact is tough.
Writing and publishing articles and blogs gave me the confidence to write and self-publish a picture book: Zeb, Jet And The Ice-Cream Calamity. It’s an adventure story that includes a song with the important allergic reaction prevention message.
Clean Paws Allergy Laws – Chorus
(c) M Lavelle
Wipe your mouth and wash your hands,
Bin all wrappers, crumbs and cans,
Your food and drink please do not share,
Spread this message everywhere.
It accompanies me every time I deliver workshops in schools, where we explore how best to engender a culture of allergy understanding, care, inclusion and respectful language.
I stay in touch with and support allergy organisations and am now an ambassador for the Allergy and Free From Show, Mirabel Lavelle – Allergy and Free From Show. I travel every year to meet with founders and campaigners, to unite as one voice in bringing about much-needed change. We provide families with support.
Representation matters, hence the national campaigns.
You can write to your MPs and ask them to support Benedict’s Law – Benedict Blythe Foundation The School Allergy Safety Bill Protecting Pupils with Allergies in Schools | Benedict Blythe Foundation This will ensure an allergy policy in every school that includes training, spare autoinjector pens and a healthcare plan for every affected child.
Additionally, I speak on TV, Radio, podcasts and local meetings in order to reach wide audiences. That’s how I play my part in the allergy safety revolution.
© Mirabel Lavelle, 2025
Check out Zeb, Jet, And The Ice-Cream Calamity in my shop
Check out Zeb, Jet, And The Ice-Cream Calamity on Amazon
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The final piece I’m sharing takes on a political feel, looking at some of the theories about radical thought and ideas; it’s a whistle-stop tour through history from Sebastian Elanko, who says: “This poem is structured upon the theories of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Gerhard Lenski, tracing the course of socio-anthropological evolution from the Stone Age to the modern era.”
An Unfinished March
Let’s travel back through Time’s swift whirl,
To trace the ancient to the modern world.
I. The Dawn (Primitive Communism)
A forest, 200,000 BCE—
Beware wild dogs stalking a scent: you and me.
A world carved from the Stone Age,
Bone and flint honed to a sharp edge.
From pit-huts woven thick with leaves,
Children leap to touch the overhung eaves.
They know the warm embrace of mother,
but not the man who is their father.
Hunting and gathering, their daily rite;
All worked as one, with no strife in sight.
All things common, held in trust,
No concept yet of private dust.
Small squabbles, yes, but no gnawing poverty,
No social classes—no forced conformity.
After the day’s toil, they snuggle, deep,
A contented community, where rancour lies asleep.
No spectre of racism or fascism’s art—
The heart of primitive communism’s start.
II. The Chains (Ancient Slave Mode)
Time’s whirl carries us to a different age,
to sun-baked fields of Rome, we turn the page.
Bound to labour in the dust, a story to be told:
They were not farmers, but slaves, bound by a chain.
The Emperor owned every field and life,
His guards ensured the peace, ended by the knife.
Overseers, with whip, the slightest fault derived,
A control that barely kept them alive.
All the slaves produced, to the State was given,
For roads, baths and games, the order they lived in.
The Ancient Slave Mode, under Rome’s pitiless skies,
Where the enslaved obeyed with downcast eyes.
III. The Oath (Feudalism)
A bygone age, with new, enforced designs,
A colder, sterner wind now shines.
Marble empires crumbled, legions fled the light,
As in high walls, a King claimed his God-given right.
He parcelled land to lords of steel and might,
For oaths of fealty and a pledge to fight.
Knights held fields for their military fee,
Serfs at the base, tied to the land, not free.
They worked the lord’s land for nought—their lot—
Yielding half the yield from their own small plot.
The Feudal compact, a grim, descending tower,
The King’s distant rule, the lord’s real power.
IV. The Machine (Capitalism)
We reach the twentieth century’s gate,
State power growing, early and late.
The forge of history burns with a different fire,
Factory smoke blackening manor, spire, and shire.
Owners sail on seas of leisure, free,
while workers spill their blood for meagre fee.
Clerks fret, pulling hair in stress,
Targets of their bureaucratic press.
Conflict crystallises, class war in motion,
In weary sighs and raw, market emotion.
This Capitalism they call Democracy,
A system veiling stark hypocrisy.
V. The Horizon (Socialism)
Now our journey reaches its sharp bend,
A future unwritten, where no tales extend.
The workers and artisans, fists raised to the sky,
Saw the owners’ reign pass by.
A new rule rose, Capitalism’s throne fell fast,
They marched and named the path—Socialism’s vast.
A world where class strife ends, all divisions cease to be,
A promised communism, for all society.
We pause our journey here, upon this hopeful height,
Before tides of history obscure this hard-won light.
© Sebastian Elanko, 2025
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My thanks to all the contributors. When I thought about looking at revolution through this lens, I hadn’t expected such a range of writing!
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Issue 26, featuring Patrick Vernon OBE, is out now. You will find it in libraries and other outlets. Alternatively, all current and previous editions can be found on our magazines page here.
You can hear great new ideas, creative work and writing tips on Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo or find us on Spotify.
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If you or someone you know has been affected by issues covered in our pages, please see the relevant link below for information, advice and support:
