Poetry Competition 2023

Best Llanito Category Highly Commended

“School life as a Llanito” by Isabella Villa

8:00am it's time for school

My class thinks that they rule "Que pasa bro!" Everyone says

But me and my friends just want to go to bed

The bell rings, it's time for our first lesson We say hello to the pigeons, Pepe and Nelson

The bell rings again, it's time for break Sometimes good people give out cake The teachers say vamo and don't be late

After English and Maths it's time for lunch Children come running to eat their Monster Munch Que weno, torta patata too I see

But that's just way too much for me

More lessons, we learn about food

We make Calentita and it tastes so good!

The school day is over everyone goes home And sometime soon, I will be alone

At 8 o'clock the sun goes down There's nobody else left in town

The sky is dark and the oceans grey Levante for tomorrow so they say

Judge Charlie Durante’s comments:

Isabella Villa with School life as a Llanito. Though not overtly Yanito, Isabella’s poem about a day in a local school sounds natural, relaxed and very genuine. The infrequent use of Yanito probably reflects the slow erosion of our peculiar mix of English and Spanish. Linguists bemoan the slow disappearance of Yanito and Isabella’s poem shows the predominance of English among most of our school pupils. However, ejaculations like ‘que pasa bro!’ and ‘que weno’ are still defiantly Yanito and are examples of how emotional outbursts tend to be in Yanito. The two pigeons, Pepe and Nelson, the teacher with ‘vamo’ and the ‘calentita’ are quintessentially Gibraltarian and convey the Yanito culture.

It's heartening to see a school pupil trying her hand at writing a Yanito poem. Well done!