How to swim and stay in place: 2014 Foyle Winners Anthology

Foyle Young Poets of the Year Anthology

“The Poetry Society makes young people feel as if anything is possible.

It was superb to witness the success of one of our former commended poets as she embarked upon the start of her literary journey. Foyle really does bring out the best in our students; long may it continue!”

Ramnika Sharma, Teacher Trailblazer

Foyle Young Poets of the Year Anthology The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX www.poetrysociety.org.uk ISBN: 978-1-900771-86-3. Cover: James Brown, jamesbrown.info © The Poetry Society & authors, 2014

How to swim and stay in place Poems by the Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2014

Acknowledgements The Poetry Society would like to thank the Foyle Foundation for its generous funding and Arts Council England for its ongoing support. We also thank Bloodaxe, Carcanet, Divine Chocolate, Faber, Frances Lincoln, Picador, Poems on the Underground, Puffin, Seren, Walker Books, Macmillan and tall-lighthouse for continuing to provide book prizes for the Award, and welcome new supporters the Forward Arts Foundation and Inpress Books.

Our gratitude goes out to our judges, Grace Nichols and Simon Barraclough, for their energy and enthusiasm in helping to make 2014’s competition the most successful to date. We are delighted to welcome incoming judges Liz Berry and Michael Symmons Roberts for the 2015 competition.

We are grateful to Southbank Centre, London, for hosting the prize-giving ceremony and Arvon for hosting the Foyle Young Poets’ residency with commitment and expertise.

Our thanks go out to Marcus Stanton Communications for raising awareness of the competition, and to our network of poets and workshop leaders across the UK for helping us to inspire the next generation of writers.

Finally, we applaud the enthusiasm and dedication of the young people and teachers who make Foyle Young Poets the great success it is today.

Find more at www.foyleyoungpoets.org and www.facebook.com/FoylePoets

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Contents Introduction Magnus Dixon Sophia Tait Kathryn Cussons Joseph Davison-Duddles Sala Fadelallah Ila Colley Anne Widdowson Rebecca Alifimoff Kyle Lovell Isla Anderson Daniella Cugini Matthew Ridley Hannah Keyte Jasmine Burgess Audrey Spensley

4 Force Ten Mosaic Me Aubade Oranges The End of Our Journey New Vibrations The Little Mermaid On Being Asked What Kind Of Doctor I Will Be When I Grow Up The Sunken Cathedral Prometheus Goes To A&E picture you freak Captain Ahab’s Daughters After Pied Beauty The Sea Aftermath of a Pilgrimage

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List of commendations Foyle Foundation The Poetry Society and opportunities for young writers Enter the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2015

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2015 entry form

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Introduction “It is fantastic to see a poetry competition which includes young people from all over the world. I am proud to support Foyle and welcome all those brave enough to show their work to the judges.”

Martha Kearney, BBC broadcaster & Foyle Ambassador Welcome to the latest winners’ anthology of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. 2014 was a record-breaking year: submissions from 7,603 young poets from 78 countries make it one of the largest literary competitions in the world. Among this year’s winners (the 15 top winners and 85 commended poets) are young poets from France, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Canada and the USA. This booklet features the winning 15 poems by the Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2014, and names the 85 commended poets selected by judges Simon Barraclough and Grace Nichols.

The quality of entries was, as ever, of a very high standard and the judges had their work cut out to make the final selection.

Barraclough praised the winning poems as “impossible to ignore” and Nichols spoke of their “hauntingly arresting” qualities. The mundane and the mythical coexist beautifully across these 15 winning works; Nichols was impressed by how the details of the everyday are brought into focus in “fresh and original ways” whilst Barraclough praised how monsters and mythologies receive “bold, gruesome, vigorous” treatments, as Captain Ahab, Leviathan, Prometheus, the Little Mermaid and indeed General Pinochet all make an appearance.

Founded by the Poetry Society in 1998, the Award has been supported by the Foyle Foundation since 2001 and is now firmly

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established as the key competition for young poets aged between 11 and 17 years. Over the past 18 years the Award has kick-started the career of some of today’s most exciting new voices, including Next Generation Poet Helen Mort, Commended Faber New Poet Phoebe Power, and Ian Burnette, whose poem ‘Dutch Baby’ was Highly Commended in the prestigious Forward Prizes 2014. The phrase ‘Former Foyle Young Poet’ is now found in countless professional biographies as alumni make their mark on the wider literary world, their names appearing on bookshelves and at festivals the world over – from the BBC Proms to Glastonbury.

The top 15 poets are invited to attend a week’s residential creative writing course at Arvon’s Shropshire centre, The Hurst, or receive a poet residency in their school followed by distance mentoring. All of the winners receive one year’s Youth Membership of the Poetry Society, and a range of book prizes and goodies from our partner publishers and companies. They also benefit from ongoing support and encouragement from the Poetry Society, via publication, performance and internship opportunities.

The Award also incorporates a year-round programme of activity to support creativity and literacy in schools. We offer additional poet-led workshops to a number of Applauded schools, to reward their continuing commitment to and enthusiasm for the Award, and send free Foyle-inspired lesson plans to every UK Head of English.

Every year the scheme also nurtures best practice in creative writing teaching by identifying committed ‘Teacher Trailblazers’ to act as mentors and share best practice and lesson ideas online.

We hope you enjoy reading the poems in this anthology and that they inspire many more new poets to enter in 2015. Happy reading!

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Magnus Dixon Force Ten “Some trees blown down, damage to buildings, high churning white sea.”

“They’re white horses,” you said, as they cantered with manes of salt, tossing their hooves in the breeze.

But tonight, I think, they are wolves.

Their rhythm gone under the wind, howls shatter on sea-stained rocks and I want to scream too – a long scream, leaving me as dizzy as the spray, cold sweat on strands of polypropylene – urban wrack sheared from the bough of a trawler, its iron lungs gasping through surging wraths of storm.

In this light I believe old tales, told by seamen in hazes of memory: hyperbole clinging like barnacles to old stories of the Leviathan, its weary eyes like lanterns, every sinew a log of ancient oak.

They wouldn’t feel it, safe, cocooned in deep sea.

Safe, in nests of kelp and currents, whilst at sea level dune-grass bows, heaving a sodden surrender and my notebook bleeds waterlogged graphite as white wolves howl.

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Sophia Tait Mosaic Me The world is changed when seen through A mirror, smashed and cracked. The view Is broken. I can only see A jigsaw puzzle; Mosaic me.

I look into a broken face, Patterned, lined across, like lace, And now my eyes stare back at me, Stare right back at Mosaic me.

My bedroom is cracked straight through, The walls, the floor, the windows too, Yet when I look around I see, A normal world. No Mosaic me.

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Kathryn Cussons Aubade You were up before the sun rose and busy swallowing dry cereal like you hadn’t eaten in days.

I found you circuiting the table like a race dog and offered tea rather than a good morning kiss.

I left you to out-hiss the kettle as I thumbed in my contact lenses praying that they could push the morning into focus.

By the time I’d poured the tea (an olive branch admitting it was partly my fault) and burnt the toast and my fingers, you had slipped away without a key.

I sat with two cups for company staring into them like a pair of doleful eyes and listened while they did their best to apologise for your absence.

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Joseph Davison-Duddles Oranges Every summer, oranges grew like heartbeats: my father went to the grave of his sister and my mother picked them from the trees.

Mornings and nights were peeled from their days and every day seemed a Sunday, a few fruit bathed in cold water to slow their ripening.

Occasionally, with the oranges unwatched, we would steal them early from the water – our hands dripping across the kitchen floor.

The juice went sticky and stained our hands till we soaked in the basin water at evening, when the sun is a fruit on its lowest branch.

On those evenings, my father would sit in the orchard after every fruit had fallen and watch them change to molten shades.

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Sala Fadelallah The End of Our Journey A volcano of rainbows, Waiting To erupt.

Our women’s multicoloured scarves Whip and dip In a fury, As they lay the table for Eid. The placid plodder’s trek Along the grains of desert rice Wasn’t easy.

But my connection with the almighty Has kept me fighting strong.

The first batch rises from the oven.

The scent of sweet spices Drown the kitchen.

The warmth of Haboba’s kaak Was highly heart-warming.

The rice was like the desert.

The lamb like the gateway.

The broccoli, the centre of the oasis.

All fellow guests Gather at our home, our oasis.

Young ones enlightened,

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Screaming with popcorn souls.

Agitated eyes shining with elation.

Laying on the rich ceremonial salver Was a cheery lamb.

Without it, The glistening pool, In the centre of the oasis, Would vanish.

We all sat On our beige mounds Like the land of the burning sun.

It is time To enjoy our felicity feast.

Haboba is my grandmother and kaak are traditional biscuits.

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Ila Colley New Vibrations Inspired by Jens Lekman’s ‘A Promise’ and Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia de la Luz A Swedish musician strums a guitar and tastes beer in his nostrils, and feels biting steel strings across his fingers like the sun-blazed railroads between ghost towns on the Atacama Desert.

His lyrics wage a porcelain pledge to an ill friend to see Chile, the Chilean women, the most beautiful.

He forgets the cracked lips of the desert, the broken voices of mothers and sisters with their hands in sands of Mars, who left their hourglass at home years ago, remembering only how to use their knuckles like rakes through a sky to catch the tail-end of a cloud as the weather reports document sun. Sun since decades.

The bloody evidence, long devoured by a thirsty nation, is rich on their tongues. At sunset their ears turn eastward.

Spilling over from the green side of the Andes, a soured wind; the brittle chime of bones knocking.

A Swedish musician strums a guitar and tastes beer in his nostrils, and feels biting steel strings across his fingers like the sun-blazed railroad to Pinochet’s concentration camp on the Atacama Desert.

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He knows the sting like a live wire, slicing the world from Santiago, where it all burned out, to Stockholm, whose clean white sheets and city fountains hide a muddy crucible, hot in the throat of a new European ideal.

But sings only of beautiful Chilean women with their hands clean because if a new world cannot be allowed to dream it is no new world. Instead it is plagued by history, an illness which promises nothing but infinite progression towards the star at the brink of a swelling universe, towards a constellation of bones too flung to resemble anybody who once lived, or shared your blood.

But let us choose which vibrations to pursue.

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Anne Widdowson The Little Mermaid The Little Mermaid began to chop Her shimmering tail in two, And squirmed beneath the axe’s head.

Blood spread across the clammy flesh, Wet tissue sprayed about her chest, As she maimed the sticky limb.

The cleft drooled, alien matter, Not only to us; the girl was sickened By the mutant fin, felt hatred For her mongrel blood.

But time for alterations and tweaks, To correct this monstrous flaw.

She grasped the fragile nerves and snapped; Scales scattered where the water lapped Her stinking slab of meat.

Scraps of sinew licked her wrists, Slimy, hot beneath her frenzied touch, Her shaking, grisly hands.

The child admired her work, unfazed By the carnage, the carcass, the sight, Hefting the chunks like a cripple might.

The pieces oozed and bulged, Her figure, in her eyes, much improved Compared to that dreadful tail.

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With a sigh of respite and release, She regarded the newly botched legs And smiled. Fillets replaced the fin she had, Hardly equipped to walk on land.

What a pity she’d never stand On her two new stumps.

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Rebecca Alifimoff On Being Asked What Kind Of Doctor I Will Be When I Grow Up My mother bakes with hands placed inside strangers and does not tell me what it is like to let someone die.

Spaghetti is a meal served with textbook words, anaesthesia with marinara, appendectomy with dessert. She tried to teach me how to swim and stay in place.

The word aspirate is used to describe my father’s wide hands, calloused against needles, pulling me from the pool. For years after I dreamt of a salt water lake in my lungs, hidden from the scalpel nails of my mother, and my father dressed as Morpheus. Hiding behind corners. Together they would drain me and rake my silt-filled bronchi.

We do not understand the science of general anaesthetics, how it pulls people under. The trick, my mother says, her voice floating over a radio discussion on botched executions, is giving someone enough drugs to kill them but not letting them die.

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Kyle Lovell The Sunken Cathedral If you strain your ears toward the westward ocean, you may catch the faded notes of an organ, crafted from the hallowed and hollowed bones of a whale’s ribcage, which had washed ashore centuries before by summer waves and polished until gleaming by winter winds.

If you strain your eyes toward the westward ocean, you may spy the silhouette of the organist, a child, hunched over the bone keys as her hands dance with a clumsy innocence, asking the whale to sing his songs.

If you strain your ears toward the westward ocean, you may catch the whispers of an ancient lullaby, telling of a time when leviathans slept within sunless ravines and the whale learnt his songs from wandering monk fish who recited the karmic sutra of the sea.

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If you strain your eyes toward the westward ocean, you may spy the figure of the child, shining softly in the shadow of her sanctuary.

Sleeping softly in the shadow of a sun-sunken cathedral.

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Isla Anderson Prometheus Goes To A&E Beneath a torn and bloody shirt they found his chest unscathed – were baffled by his siren cries, that tortured, pleading gaze.

The doctors checked his vital signs and found him in the clear.

His pulse and temperature were fine; they asked ‘Why are you here?’ and echo-gaunt Prometheus could hardly speak the words – he clutched his abdomen and cried ‘I beg you, stop the bird!’

The surgeons didn’t understand – his liver was intact!

‘The man must be delusional; his pain is so abstract.’

‘Go home, Prometheus,’ they said, ‘and don’t be so obscure’ – they couldn’t hear the scratching of the eagle at the door.

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Daniella Cugini picture you freak 11:17 it is not actually possible to watch this much masterchef in one week. gordon ramsay is etched onto my retinas, his jaw contorts. there is no escape. wifi is inevitable. I could flee this earth but will the seabass still be raw in the fourth dimension.

13:00 the girl in front of me slips a restricted-section book onto the counter, scantily clad woman under sleek black typeface. the blurb can be condensed to I dare you. she meets the bookstore owner’s eyes, but years have deadened his propensities to disapproval. she pays him in school tokens. the laser goes flick-flick like the protagonist’s tongue.

17:13 storms are most enthralling when you are not in them. lightning blood-vessels the sky. thunder cymbals dangerously. I mutter something about deities having food poisoning but the rain cuts me off. this is when I remember I have dawkins’s the god delusion in my rucksack. subtlety is a lost art, damnation isn’t.

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21:56 I should write an essay on the wasp factory. never then, never now – I want its heart shunted through my brain is that too much to ask for twice? and to pulse itself out through my pen. nowadays four-fifths my blood is good paper, it flows hardly. the bookcase is mostly unread, baleful, an array of spines crumpled to the brink of paraplegia. the wasp factory’s is the smoothest, which is somehow ironic.

23:39 I use poet as a verb. I start all my sentences in the middle like and so or as if, it is all a continuation. I consider diets, then I consider sonnets to clarified butter in the same breath. butter really does need clarification. inevitably I think of him. but what is left to think? he is a game of nerve endings; he wins. he appears without introduction; he leaves without annunciation. I burn in a more pedestrian way – at the typewriter, in stages. time unpicks her stitches, slowly. his keyboard now has fingerprints three months deeper than when he met me. quickthink. philosophy darkens as I grow older and the commas, they wane.

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Matthew Ridley Captain Ahab’s Daughters Maggie is the lucky one, the one born inside of antediluvian prayers and polyester palms.

Walking, she sings lullabies through the gaps in her teeth, open closets into a hall of bird baths.

The golden chains and slant you could only imagine in those pop culture magazines. Like the sparrows, she twirls her way through the marketplace, eyeing and bobbing at the produce. Once, after two months of thunderstorms, she picked up a basket of oranges to remind her sisters of the sun’s consistency.

Leslie has her father’s eyes. Known as ‘the shipwreck’, she cries out tears of vodka and moonshine during those indie concerts her boyfriend plays for her at the park.

A kaleidoscope vision and a taste of chameleon’s breath.

“The oceans,” she said once (and only once) in geography class, “are never the same.” In her world, the rain is only a metaphor.

The shards that accompany it, truth. Through the windows glazed, you can hear a rag doll crashing like the fragility of horse mirrors.

“Glass does fall sideways,” says her superego.

Charlotte is dead. She now absorbs the Mississippi River and lets the deltas run through her veins, a liquid mermaid. She is found inside all of our drinking glasses, our bathtub faucets, in our air conditioners. Also in the condescension of the after-rain, which Leslie thinks is also a metaphor. Charlotte could haunt us all if she wanted to, but she does not. Sometimes, we wonder

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if she even really existed, or if she was just another myth in the folklore textbooks passed down from the 1700s.

Sophie is the runt girl, the baby of a sperm whale.

She wears tiny glasses to make her face look fuller and torn stockings to prove that she can, indeed, pick up the chili-peppered boys from those NRA meetings. She thinks of trains the color purple and smiles a little smile whenever her sister Maggie brings home Chocolate Royale ice cream. She keeps her mouth drooped to feed the stray cats stumbling in the backyard a good five minutes before they arrive. Maybe a time traveler. Maybe a ghost. At night, Sophie dreams a little dream of her father as a retriever, paddling to her under a ceiling of rosary nebulae. “Save yourself from this world,” he pleads. “I want you to trim the blubber.” She then takes all the family pictures left that she hasn’t burned, puts them in bottles of her favorite vintage wines, and flushes them down the toilet. Away from herself, from everyone.

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Hannah Keyte After Pied Beauty Thank you for the pungent smell of a newly painted room, For the smooth feeling of the cold side of a pillow, For the bareness of a lightning-struck tree, The lonesome feather sticking out of a pillow, And the brave piece of branch peeping out of a hedge.

For everything immaculate, irregular and irritating: For the addiction to popping fuchsia buds, For the crispy texture of a horse’s forehead, And the magic height of the sky.

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Jasmine Burgess The Sea I know why the sea is a black dog – And I know the velocity of his heartbeat – He is playful, loyal, with a panting grin That makes you grin back.

He lunges upwards to swallow us, Thrashing fists into rocks in frustration, As the lead strains him back.

I know why the sea tastes of black olives, I know the stinging bees as you swallow, The slap that would freeze ice.

I do not like the sea, People think it is light blue, Floaty dress fabric, but I know.

We try to dance across the surface, With a million miles stretching below us, Hungry and waiting.

I know each note in the sea’s swirling symphony, And I know why the melody repeats to infinity.

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Audrey Spensley Aftermath of a Pilgrimage Of course they have scars. No one crosses an ocean just for fun. An unknown geography still stitched into the lines of their sunken palms. It’s embarrassing, your tongue dragging across the rugged syllables of bloodlines mixed and torn, their eyes swollen like fruit but more harsh. Maybe there’s not a learning curve. Maybe there’s no way to navigate the mangled syntax, the November morning when you rechristen yourself Sarah. A soft name, the rough edges of accents smoothed out like tangled sheets. You stumble over the desperation of their love the way your fingers stumbled over the piano keys, the wobbly attempts at calligraphy. Your mother is the keeper of the two paned windows in the kitchen, catching the dying light between her fingers. Behind the glass she sees familiar soil sprouting the ripe pears you spear open before dinner.

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Or it’s the soft puncture of a sigh when they see the magazines splayed open across your lap like borders wrenched apart. Or it’s her eyes after she hangs up a call across a hemisphere, the receiver muted in static, silenced like a bullet wound.

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Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2014 Congratulations to the commended poets Mariya Ahmed, Julia Apffel, Guntaj Arora, Theo Ayres, Brooke Baker, Tom Baldock, Emee Begum, Yasmin Belkhyr, Troy Bowerbank, Lizzie Briggs, Kamaria Brown Whittingham, Jennifer Burville-Riley, Francesca Capossela, Ariella Carmell, Dervla Carroll, Josephine Carter, Alice Cattley, Amy Cavender, Chloe Chan, Jemima Childs, Madison Cho-Richmond, Eleanor Coy, Bryony Dawson, Emily Dee, Catherine Dent, Anna Doak, Natasha Dolgobrodova, Caoimhe Downing, Amy Dunning, Noah Dversdall, Hannah Gabriel, Molly Garbutt, Ed Gilligan-Davis, Jessie Goetzinger, Roshni Gohil, Alison Graham, Alex Greenberg, Laura Harray, Chante Hazlewood, Katie Hibner, Melissa Ho, Samuel Holmes, Esther Jeon, Zoe Kaiser, Phoebe Lee, Chloe Lee, Michal Leibowitz, Felicity Leung, Alannah Lewis, Emma Lister, Ed Lyness, Ian Macartney, Kate Millar, Emily Nicholson, Ella Nixon, Mira Palakodaty, Sam Peters, Tamsin Peto-Dias, Isobel Robinson, Grace Rogers, Jonathan Ross, Sophie Russell, Tom Scott, Mahima Shah, Nicole Stimpson, Jonathan Stone, Phoebe Stuckes, Zainab Syed, Jing Min Tan, Max Thomas, Ridhi Thukral, Kimmy Tran, Cedric Turtenwald, Sophie van Waardenberg, Sylvia Villa, Lucy Wainger, Aletheia Wang, Saduni Wanniarachchi, Lottie Williams, Rachel Wood, Helen Woods, Emma Wright, Boris Young, Emily Zhang, Margaret Zhang.

For a wealth of ideas on where to go next with your poetry, visit youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk

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Foyle Foundation The Foyle Foundation is an independent grantmaking trust supporting UK charities which, since its formation in 2001, has become a major funder of the arts and learning. The Foyle Foundation has invested in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award since 2001, one of its longest partnerships. During this time it has trebled its support and enabled the competition to develop and grow to become one of the premier literary awards in the country. www.foylefoundation.org.uk

The Poetry Society The Poetry Society is Britain’s leading voice for poets and poetry.

Founded in 1909 to promote “a more general recognition and appreciation of poetry”, the Society is now one of the country’s most dynamic arts organisations, with nearly 4,000 members around the world. It is the publisher of the UK’s leading magazine, The Poetry Review. With innovative education and commissioning programmes, and a packed calendar of performances, readings and competitions, the Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. www.poetrysociety.org.uk As well as the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, the Poetry Society offers lots of other opportunities for young writers: Young Poets Network is the Poetry Society’s online platform for young writers. If you’re an emerging poet, an avid reader, an enthusiastic performer, or just starting out in poetry, the Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network will help develop your poetry skills.

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There you will find workshops, writing challenges and professional feedback, together with exciting features on every aspect of reading, writing and performing poetry. There’s also a list of opportunities for young writers, such as other poetry competitions, magazines and writing groups. From preparing poetry submissions and reading at an open mic, to finding an internship or setting up your own magazine, we’ve a lively community of young and established poets ready to share their advice and experiences. Contributors include Ross Sutherland, Jo Shapcott, Daljit Nagra and Clare Pollard, and we’ve recently partnered with fantastic organisations like Cape Farewell, BBC Proms and English National Ballet on exciting new initiatives. Register at www.youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk and ‘like’ us at facebook.com/youngpoetsnetwork SLAMbassadors UK is the Poetry Society’s national spoken word competition for young people, open to 12-18 year olds. Prizes include a masterclass weekend at the Poetry Society with Slam Champion Joelle Taylor and a live performance at a prestigious London venue. Recent judges, mentors and performers have included Kate Tempest, Dizraeli, Hollie McNish and Scroobius Pip. Workshops are available to schools and youth groups. To learn more visit slam.poetrysociety.org.uk Poetry Society Youth Membership is open to anyone aged 11-18 and costs just £15 per year. Members receive free books, posters and the Poetry Society’s newsletter Poetry News. All 100 winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award receive a year’s free membership as part of their prize.

School Membership is also available. School members receive books, magazines and resources such as Poems on the

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Underground posters. All member schools receive a free Poets in Schools consultancy service – expert guidance on organising poet visits or INSET sessions. Specially tailored lesson plans, longer term poet residencies and poet-led showcase events can also be arranged.

The Poets in Schools consultancy service is also available to non-member schools for a small fee.

For details about all of our projects, visit www.poetrysociety.org.uk/ education or email education@poetrysociety.org.uk

Help young writers thrive The Poetry Society’s work with young people and schools across the UK has changed the lives of many emerging readers, writers and performers of poetry; developing confidence and literacy skills, encouraging self-expression and opening up new life opportunities. Show your support for our programme by donating at poetrysociety.org.uk/donate

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Enter the Foyle Young Poets Award 2015 Judges: Liz Berry & Michael Symmons Roberts Any writer between the ages of 11 and 17 (inclusive) on the closing date of 31 July 2015 can enter the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2015. The competition is free to enter and poems can be of any length. Individuals may enter more than one poem. Please consult the rules of the competition before sending your entries, published in full at www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/ competitions/fyp/rules Please concentrate on drafting and redrafting your poems – quality is more important than quantity! Entries cannot be returned under any circumstances so please keep copies. We are unable to respond to entrants individually. Enter at www.foyleyoungpoets.org or photocopy the entry form opposite and send it, with your poems, to: FYP 2015, The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX. Please mark the back of each poem with the entrant’s name and postcode. Teachers can request class set entry forms (to enter poems from whole classes) and free resources (anthologies, promotional posters and lesson plans) by emailing fyp@poetrysociety.org.uk.

Prizes include an invitation to a glittering prize-giving event in London, a week-long residential writing course at a prestigious Arvon Centre, poet visits to schools, Poetry Society Youth Membership, and exciting books and poetry goodies. The top 15 winners’ poems will be printed in our 2015 anthology and sent to schools, libraries and poets across the UK and beyond.

To enter online, and for some hints and tips on writing a winning poem, go to www.foyleyoungpoets.org

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Entry Form 2015 Individuals: please complete and post this form or enter online at www.foyleyoungpoets.org Teachers: to submit multiple entries, use a Class Set

Entry Form available at www.foyleyoungpoets.org or on request – email fyp@poetrysociety.org.uk

Name ______________________________________________ Address _____________________________________________ __________________________________________________ Postcode ________________ Country

__________________

Your school __________________________________________ Your tel MOBILE PREFERRED ________________________________ Your email

________________________________________________________________

Number of poems submitted ____________________________________________ Date of birth _____________________ Gender MALE Ethnic background

FEMALE

OPTIONAL __________________________________________

The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2015, judged by Michael Symmons Roberts and Liz Berry, is open to writers between the ages of 11 and 17 years (inclusive) on the closing date of 31 July 2015.

Poets can enter more than one poem, of any length and on any theme. Competition entries cannot be returned under any circumstances so please make sure you keep copies. Please write the entrant’s name and postcode on the reverse of each poem submitted. Please consult rules before sending entries, published in full at: www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/fyp/rules Please photocopy, complete and return this entry form and send it, with your poems, to: FYP 2015, The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX or enter online at www.foyleyoungpoets.org The Poetry Society has created a FREE online community, Young Poets Network, to keep you updated with opportunities for young writers. If you do NOT wish to join the mailing list, please tick here

A B C D E F G

www.foyleyoungpoets.org