A collection of poems being published in memory of a 17-year-old who took his own life after years of bullying, has been edited by the Scottish Makar, Jackie Kay.
Ms Kay, the national poet, has also written two poems for the anthology, Ten Poems of Kindness, which is being published in memory of Felix Alexander, who died in 2016.
Candlestick Press is launching Ten Poems of Kindness at Pershore High School, Worcestershire on April 26.
Ten Poems of Kindness is allied to a campaign, ‘Felix’s Campaign of Kindness’, which was launched by the mother of Felix Alexander, Lucy.
The pamphlet is dedicated to the memory of Felix and contains the Open Letter written by her after his death.
In that letter she wrote: "Be that one person prepared to stand up to unkindness. You will never regret being a good friend."
The publishers said: "Kindness can be an underestimated value in our increasingly hectic and impersonal world.
"It is a word that we use most often in our conversations with young children when we tell them to be kind to a fellow creature or a new friend. "These generous poems remind us that kindness can take many forms and that a kind gesture doesn’t have to be either time-consuming or complicated."
The book contains by Fleur Adcock, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ian Duhig, Sarah Howe, Jackie Kay, Yusef Komunyakaa, Norman MacCaig, Sylvia Plath, Rabindranath Tagore and Kate Tempest.
After her son died, Lucy Alexander said her son was so damaged by the abuse, isolation and unkindness he had experienced before his death that he did not realise anyone at his school cared about him.
The sixth-form student, from Worcester, was pronounced dead after being hit by a train near the city in April 2016.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here