“WHERE freedom means peace,/ Where a community is a family/That’s my life./Where education goes without money,/Where quality outweighs quantity,/Where the surprises are neverending./I am proud to say:/I come from East London.”

This is part of a poem by Fateha from Poplar, written a few weeks ago about her home neighbourhood.

It’s included in the poetry anthology Stepney Words III to be launched at Rich Mix in east London on Tuesday March 21, during which some fine young poets from four secondary schools in Tower Hamlets will read their poetry and celebrate their huge creative talent.

The first Stepney Words was printed in a small Jewish printshop in Brick Lane in May 1971. It was full of children’s poems from another generation, expressing their thoughts on their lives and their borough.

But the governors of Sir John Cass School in Stepney attended by the poets were all men — mostly Anglican priests and City businessmen — and they didn’t like the poems and their critical-creative vision.

I, as the probationary English teacher who edited the anthology, was summarily sacked.

The students came out on strike against my dismissal, massed outside the school and marched through the City to Trafalgar Square, where they rallied. With the loyal support of the National Union of Teachers, I won my case and returned to the school in 1973.

That was a long time ago and there have been huge changes in Tower Hamlets since then. The poems in Stepney Words III express this truth with a powerful imaginative flair, coming from its predominantly bilingual writers.

There is the same recourse to lyrical language as, for example, in Mushina’s picture of the nearby rivershore, close to where she lives on the Isle of Dogs: “Observing the beauty of the river,/Glancing upon the view on a cold day as I shiver,/Breathing the freshness of the crisp air/As I feel the view of the Thames,/The trees dancing in the wind/From the leaves to the stems...”

But all is not beautiful, and these poets’ critical instincts are well to the fore. Samiya tells us: “I come from an area/that has lots of violence,/fist against fist/knife against knife,/it’s so sad/like war./Cold feeling in my heart/filled with blood,/ tears found on a rusted knife/ twisted nightmare with no ending.”

Intiaz expresses the pain and rejection of racism and the intense isolation that he feels: “I am eating PFC/that’s haram,/I’m meeting with my friends/that’s haram./I’m sitting by myself/no-one to talk to/no-one is my friend,/they feel like I’m an immigrant/because of the EDL/that’s haram.”

Rezwana recalls a visit to a local hospital on a busy, brutal night that she recalls all too well: “So much pain, but it has to go somewhere,/Scars and bruises on his face,/Blood slowly dripping on his face,/At that moment my heart just shattered/to pieces/Far too small to put together.”

Stepney Words III is full of such bold, imaginative description and narratives of East London now.

I have been lucky to have worked with some tremendous teachers and powerful young London poets — Talia Randall, Maria Ferguson, Cecilia Knapp and Caleb Femi among them — as well as the brilliant photographer Ron McCormick, responsible for the image above, in the preparation of the collection and some wonderful East London school students.

Many of them are girls from the local Bangladeshi community, who like Ishrat, proudly proclaims herself — as the Matchgirls and the east London Suffragettes did in times past — to be “East London girl,/East London my world/and where I come from.”

• Organised by Apples and Snakes, readings from Stepney Words III take place at Rich Mix, Brick Lane, London E1 at 5pm on Tuesday March 21. Free, details: richmix.org.uk. Copies of the book are available from Rich Mix.