Autistic Chesterfield schoolboy's 'heart-wrenching' poem about life in lockdown gains national attention

Kenzi Jupp, 12, suffers with autism and first started writing poetry last year to describe his experiences of living with the condition.

His touching poem, ‘I’m Just Me’, won first prize in the Young Poet Network’s annual contest and was then printed in the Young Minds collection.

Mum Mandy Pearce says Kenzi, who attends Hasland Hall Community School, became ‘very scared’ at the start of lockdown and started writing to help him cope.

"He decided to write poetry on his lockdown experience to try and be positive and supportive to others who also may be struggling,” she said.

When Mandy heard about Storychest, a project created to help children express their thoughts and feelings about lockdown and Covid-19, she sent in two of Kenzi’s poems and one of them, Life in Lockdown, won forst prize in his age group.

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"I cannot express how proud of him I am,” Mandy said.

"Kenzi is the kindest, gentlest and most thoughtful child ever. He hates unfairness and prejudice and hates to see anyone sad or hurt or upset.

"He wants to raise awareness of autism because he understands how little some people actually know about it.”

Mandy, Kenzi and his sister Leah, 15, spent lockdown together and Kenzi’s poems reveal how much he missed his nan and his friends.

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Mandy said: “Kenzi is currently working alongside a local artist John Sutcliffe to turn his first poem, I’m Just Me, into a children’s book aiming to introduce the idea of autism to younger children, dismissing some popular beliefs and myths and showing how children with autism aren’t any different to them.”

Kenzi is also working with Derbyshire Autism services as an ambassador and has been awarded a grant with the charity I Will to produce an information film to be shown in the county’s schools.

As part of Storychest, children sent in art, stories and poems for a digital time capsule that will also be archived by the British Library as part of the UK Web Archive.

Judges said they were ‘stunned’ by the standard of the entries, with some ‘heart-wrenching’ pieces of work which spanned ‘the entire range of human emotions’.

Read Kenzi’s poem here.

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