Cullen poem appears on son’s paper — Bbc Ni News
ni news: A Junior Cycle pupil in Co Galway found his mother’s poem on his higher-level English paper during this year’s State exams. Lee Davison sat the exam at Coláiste Éinde in Salthill, where Emily Cullen’s Envoi in Chalk appeared in section D.
Emily Cullen said the moment left her son “very happy” and described learning that her poem had featured on the paper as “an incredible feeling”. She said Lee came home and told her, “Mam, it went great. You won’t believe it, but the poem you wrote about me came up. The one about the chalk”.
Emily Cullen and Lee Davison
Cullen, a poet in residence at the University of Limerick, wrote Envoi in Chalk in 2019. The poem was later chosen as Poem of the Week in The Irish Times in December 2019 and appeared in her third poetry collection, Conditional Perfect, by Doire Press. Cullen said she was inspired by Lee when he was eight, after she saw him write “The world is great” with chalk on a pavement at their Rahoon home and beckoned him in for dinner.
That family moment carried into the exam room years later. Cullen said Lee was not sure whether to explain the poem’s origins when answering the question, and decided to answer in the third person because he did not think the person marking his paper might believe him.
Coláiste Éinde in Salthill
Seamus Kelly, the deputy principal at Coláiste Éinde, called it a “lovely coincidence”. He said the message Lee chalked on the pavement and the message of the poem were “so positive and life-affirming, a young boy’s view of the world that gives us all a lift”.
The unusual overlap gives the exam question a personal edge for one Galway family, but it also leaves a straightforward practical point for students: Lee handled the paper by writing in the third person, rather than treating the poem as a family anecdote inside the exam answer. For Cullen, the poem’s appearance on the State exam placed a published work, written from a home moment in Rahoon, directly into her son’s assessment.
Conditional Perfect
Envoi in Chalk had already moved beyond that pavement in Rahoon and into wider circulation through Conditional Perfect. Its appearance on the higher-level English paper brought the poem back into the family story at the same time Lee was sitting the exam in Salthill.
The result was a rare overlap between a pupil’s schoolwork and his mother’s published writing, with Cullen saying the experience was “a bright message in these dark times” and “all thanks to Lee”.
