There Was A Word For That: Foyle Young Poets Winners Anthology 2017

Foyle Young Poets of the Year Anthology

“I write because it allows me to access a different and crucial part of myself, and is a way of connecting with others.”

– Eira Murphy, winner, Foyle Young Poets of the Year

Foyle Young Poets of the Year Anthology The Poetry Society 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX, UK www.poetrysociety.org.uk ISBN: 978-1-911046-08-0. Cover: James Brown, jamesbrown.info © The Poetry Society & authors, 2018 The title of this anthology, There was a word for that, is from Aisha Mango Borja’s poem ‘The Lost Indigenous Language of Colombia’, p. 7

There was a word for that Poems by the Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2017

Acknowledgements The Poetry Society is deeply grateful for the generous funding and commitment of the Foyle Foundation, and to Arts Council England for its ongoing support.

We would also like to thank Bloodaxe, Candlestick Press, Carcanet, Divine Chocolate, The Emma Press, Eyewear, Faber and Faber, Inpress Books, Nine Arches, OutSpoken, Pan Macmillan, Paperblanks, Peepal Tree Press, Penguin Random House, Picador, PN Review, Poems on the Underground, Royal National Institute for the Blind and Vintage for providing winners’ prizes.

We send our best wishes and gratitude to the judges, Kayo Chingonyi and Sinéad Morrissey, for their passion and enthusiasm in helping to make this year’s competition such a triumph.

We thank Southbank Centre and Arvon for hosting the prize-giving ceremony and the Foyle winners’ residency with warmth and expertise. Thank you to Marcus Stanton Communications for raising awareness of the competition, and all the educators, librarians and poets who help inspire people to take part. Finally, we applaud the enthusiasm and dedication of the young people who make the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award the great success it is today. foyleyoungpoets.org

Contents Introduction Aisha Mango Borja Irina Petra Husti-Radulet Eira Murphy Cia Mangat Lucy Thynne Marina McCready Lyra Davies Max Dixon Natalie Perman Neave Scott Enshia Li

Ella Standage Margot Armbruster Suzanne Antelme Ruby Evans

4 The Lost Indigenous Language of Colombia Tracks Take 2 An Apology Which Is Not An Apology But A Love Letter breaststroke the parents anniversary a futile endeavour Topography of an Apple The sorrowful man secrets A High unwritten letter from my greatgrandmother to my greatgrandfather, 1930 archimedes’ principle / summer displacements Wormwood One Day St. Helens, Washington

7 9 10 12 14 15 16 18 19 20 21

22 24 26 27

List of commendations Foyle Foundation & The Poetry Society Young writers & The Poetry Society Schools & The Poetry Society Enter the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018

28 29 30 31 32

2018 entry form

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Introduction “I was particularly struck by the number of poems that reflected on the complexities of living at this particular moment in time rather than taking their cue from poems and contexts of the past.”

– Kayo Chingonyi, Judge 2017 Welcome to the winners’ anthology for the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017.

Since 1998 the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award has been finding, celebrating and supporting the very best young poets from around the world. Founded by The Poetry Society, the award has been supported by the Foyle Foundation since 2001 and is firmly established as the key competition for young poets aged between 11 and 17 years.

This year we received almost 11,000 poems from over 6,000 young poets from across the UK and around the world. Writers from 72 different countries entered the competition, from as far afield as Brazil, Japan, Syria and Zimbabwe. From these poems this year’s judges, Kayo Chingonyi and Sinéad Morrissey, selected 100 winners, made up of 15 top poets and 85 commended poets. The scale and global reach of the competition demonstrates what a huge achievement it is to be selected as one of our winners.

This anthology features poems by the top 15 winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017 and celebrates the names of the 85 commended poets (whose work is available in an online anthology, see p. 28). Judge Sinéad Morrissey says: “The best of the entries were incredibly impressive – so much more sophisticated and nuanced than the writing I did when I was a teenager. There was great maturity of

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approach here and confidence of address, particularly in dealing with difficult subjects. The best of these young poets have something to say (always an advantage!) and know exactly how they want to say it. Enviable skills for any writer.” We hope the quality of writing will inspire even more young writers to enter our competition in the future.

All 100 winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award receive a range of brilliant prizes, including a year’s youth membership of The Poetry Society and an array of books donated by our generous supporters. The Society continues to support winners throughout their careers, providing publication, performance and development opportunities, and access to a paid internship programme. The top 15 poets are also invited to attend a week’s writing course at the Arvon residential centre The Hurst, in Shropshire. There they spend a week with experienced tutors focussing on improving their poetry and establishing a community of writers.

The ongoing legacy of the award is demonstrated by the continued achievements in contemporary poetry by Foyle Young Poets. Indeed five-time winner Helen Mort, who recently won Myslexia’s Women’s Poetry Competition 2017 and was one of the judges of the T.S. Eliot Prize, said while discussing her experience of the award on BBC Radio 4, “that’s the best prize you can give a young writer.” For many young winners it represents the point at which they begin to consider themselves poets. Here are just a few of the successes from former winners in the past year: Jay Bernard was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and Caroline Bird was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Richard Osmond and Richard O’Brien won Eric Gregory Awards, and Richard Osmond was shortlisted for a 2017 Costa Award. Sarah Fletcher, Lizzi Hawkins and Ian Burnette won Poetry Business’ New Poets Prize 2016/2017, and Alexander Shaw was highly commended.

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Phoebe Stuckes and Theophilus Kwek were shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award, which was won by Charlotte Wetton.

Alongside the prize, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award programme includes a range of initiatives to encourage and enable young writers, both in school and independently. We distribute free teaching resources to every secondary school in the UK, share tips from talented teachers and arrange poet-led workshops in areas of low engagement. We also commission Foyle winners to create features and challenges for The Poetry Society’s online platform Young Poets Network. Through this work we continue to support young poets everywhere, so that there is more outstanding poetry to celebrate each year.

We would like to congratulate Francesca Pridham of Winstanley College, our Teacher Trailblazer for 2017, whose school writing club produced six commended winners this year. Like many educators Francesca has supported the award since the very beginning; one of her students was even a Top 15 winner in 1998, our very first year.

Finally, as we celebrate 20 years of Foyle Young Poets in 2018 we offer our thanks for the generous support of everyone who has contributed in some way and we look forward to marking many more such anniversaries with you in future.

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Aisha Mango Borja The Lost Indigenous Language of Colombia The words we lost sit in the beaches and mountains and often get caught up in fishing nets like rounded starfish that stick to your hands like Velcro their legs embedded in the palm of your hand. I’m sure there was a word for that, but not anymore.

Or words caught in the city between two men selling coconuts for the same price moving the brightly coloured carts up and down like warring peacocks while a little boy sits on the corner with flavoured ice in his hands staining his tongue blue from the dye. I’m sure there was a word for that, but not anymore.

And motorbikes whizzing round corners as if road safety was just something we hear about from neighbours or cousins, a social myth, until they crash and kiss their life goodbye but before you know it they are back and biking again. I’m sure there was a word for that, but not anymore.

They lay in words in ‘farms’, the kind of farm that’s a jungle, the farm that has a shed filled with kids and kids, animals and we lie in hay, horns like bones remind the children

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what the goats are there for: for love and smiles and family and soup. I’m sure there was a word for that, but not anymore.

Not anymore.

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Irina Petra Husti-Radulet Tracks Take 2 My book of Blake slid unnoticed into the tracks.

As the train skidded in, I climbed on, unaware.

Later, as my fingers rooted for it, too sick of watching The landscape blur stickily by, I noted my loss.

I pressed my forehead against the lukewarm pane, and thought.

Thought of the pages slicked back with wind, welcoming The train rushing in, and the spine Cracking like a bolt of elastic from the wheel-chopped sheets.

Pages fluttering like the wings of fat, clumsy pigeons – Maybe strangers will pick up scattered shreds of Experience, and Revel in reconstructed Innocence.

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Eira Murphy An Apology Which Is Not An Apology But A Love Letter Tonight, I’m dreaming of the crucifix.

Jazz plays in the background and trumpets weep. Someone shouts the swan is drowning over the sound of someone crying.

I remember singing myself awake in my cot, boys on bicycles strumming guitars outside my window. I was a deaf Juliet, making words to you and three others. I said the guinea pigs looked bigger from here. I tried to tell you the ghost was friendly, but you insisted, skipped ahead though that face I’d never seen swept my dreams. I am thinking of something else now, flooded monasteries, the measuring stick my brother bought, the pink straw hat I thought could float, the sofa too near the fire. The sonic buzz to drive away mice I could hear above my own heartbeat, a seaweed bath, dropped trays of scones.

The shudder of bells, seeds that smell of sugar.

The white house on the bend looks like a woman praying, or strung up or both. I cross the canal, watch the water drip back in. They told me stars only shine because they’re dying, powering their own goodbyes. Dark covers us. We discover light together. Blushes crumpled in tissues, left on buses, rolled up in cuff sleeves. I glue them to my wall.

I forgive myself for what I am and for what I was not. Guillotine of water. Women, high in the blue light of the Co-op, walk straight across zigzags. And if I could smoke them, blow them into grey spirals, I would, but the matches are sewn

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to your ankle, love. And though I nearly fainted, I wrote the alphabet out with my toes.

I remember a postcard I meant to send that showed proper art, something you could understand, the silent plea from a dying bird my brother won’t forgive himself for.

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Cia Mangat breaststroke I’ve watched the layers of water between your shrivelled fingers how you peel them back prunes against sheets of paper one by one until the seal of the swimming pool’s been broken until you’re able to make it wide enough for you to investigate stroke its underside tickle its belly you’ve suspended everything I can’t understand how you do it or why whenever I

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try to swim here my arms seem swathed with wet cling-film why underwater everything is lovely almost opalescent in its pleasantness why my shallow ends never bear any of your grace why the water always calms yours yet always singes my face

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Lucy Thynne the parents anniversary that on the last day of july my father would tell the story of how they had met so young in photos i once saw of an eighties blurred with rain and home haircuts how easily she had made her impression and left it there that years later he would follow her to pulsing cities and countries now closed to the rest of the world that they would marry dress each other in light a day so hot that sand could boil to glass she, a striped cat who purrs he, a tamed bear that they could repeat these words a little different year by year but by the same stellate night that he could sleep in the fourth chamber of her heart and stay there and stay there

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Marina McCready a futile endeavour it transpires that telling your GP you are concerned with your ephemerality will not accomplish a great deal. there is no prescription currently available to cure such fears and any decent psych would be too much of the same mind to help. moreover the doctor’s surgery only exacerbates the problem, after all – in what place is the presence of death more prominent? the stop smoking signs, the secretary’s spectacles pointed like church spires, the veinous hand of the elderly shaking as they fill in another insurance form, even the fish tanks seems to taunt you: “look how fleeting life is” cries the crab while a passing platy fish smiles and says “you know all things must end”

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Lyra Davies Topography of an Apple It perches there, knitted together from orbiting its own like a planet collapsing;

ripe and globular; the pinks of the world, red roundness star-struck,

sunburned and The classroom circles it test is a carousel, us spinning, ducking,

staining the sky. like the geography and each revolution sends bobbing.

The Pacific through double-glazed in moon-beaded rivulets, on the sun-lanced

deflates and spills glass panes welling up carpet and lacing us with

salty fish-hooks. on the skylight, onto our exam papers our fresh photocopies

The troposphere is tapping dripping cumulonimbi (wet ink marbles until question four

is illegible). through the windows, between shafts and gliding on

Swallows tumble flitting of jalousie-sifted sunlight watercolour wings

like paper aeroplanes, slightly ahead. gaping casement towards shredded

their bodies always They nose through the the sky to be in a thrusting jet engine, 16

feathers parachuting confetti The apple rolls off and plunges earthwards emerging in the concave palm, with bruises craters; city skyline: pitted

like fistfuls of onto bulging rain clouds. the varnished bureau like a meteor, of a creased like canyons or moon topography like a and uniform

in banality something high-flown stars

as a stranger breathes into the

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Max Dixon The sorrowful man The man’s crippled dog sat silently, it was white.

The man was writing, the paper was white.

The man’s face was sorrowful, his face was white.

The ink spilled, the paper was still white.

The clouds overhead floated, they were white.

A plane soared over, its belly was white.

The ink is soaking in the paper but the envelope was white.

The page ripped and dripped onto the grass.

The trees were white.

The man threw the letter which fell into a puddle.

The paper turned white and the puddle turned black.

The dog ran.

Its coat was white.

The dog never came back.

The man threw the envelope.

The man walked away as the envelope flew to the heavens where his mother rested in peace forever. The sun rays shined and it started to rain and a rainbow came out.

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Natalie Perman secrets secrets are sticky rice packages tied with coarse string. they sit in red stomachs swallowed in black pulsing lungs under a yellow gravestone.

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Neave Scott A High Just sort of floating.

Letting everything become a carousel.

It comes in waves.

It runs to the moon of the wiretrap nervous system and nudges you into a black hole.

I’m getting outta space.

Tumbling around kleen christian canvases. Cavernous.

Sit back, relax.

Watch the world whorl.

Big Blue Stereopticon.

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Enshia Li unwritten letter from my greatgrandmother to my greatgrandfather, 1930 In 1927, the Chinese Civil War broke out between the Nationalists and Communists. Peasants joined the fight, not knowing nor caring which side they fought on. They often joined the army for the meals. Many perished, trying to escape starvation. the last hen died / fourteen days ago / while you puffed your chest / for faceless men. / look. she died / beak open, tongue latched / on a broken triangle / of night / like a babe suckling. / in the silence / her white feathers / curled, cabbage / limp. we were out / of cabbage / months ago, / your son’s belly / a rotten head / to match. / look. I want you / to go back & hold / your life / in an open mouth / like a beggar / & capture / white hills / of rice / & capture / a revolution / revolution / revolution / break up / that word / break up / its brush / strokes / scatter it / scatter / the pieces / across these / wrinkled fields / for us / for us / to fill / our shrunken / stomachs

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Ella Standage archimedes’ principle /summer displacements this can’t be real. the air is pink, and all the birds have migrated. when my mouth breaks the surface of the water i kiss the ripples, taste chlorine, remember salt. shake off the dream like water droplets. we drive to the beach. i’ve never been in the same place twice: the earth doesn’t stay still long enough, or i don’t hold on tight enough. locations can only be relative. but the ocean empties and refills itself, and is always the same ocean. in antarctica an iceberg yawns into the sea, and the water level does not rise. freediving scares me. i’m worried the water will push its way through capillary cracks and hollow me out like a sea cave, fill my veins with salt. wind haunts the tunnels it can’t reach: where rockfall chokes the passage / where water slumps at the mouth and drowns it / here, where blood eclipses itself and light has never touched. i think about veins in the rock, flooded with brine, and the tide thumping, a lunar heartbeat. i think how a wave could slam me against the roof. the water level rises with each heartbeat, and when i look down all i see is unconsciousness blue. thick enough that you’d need a knife to cut through it / cold enough that it could make you forget what breathing is. i feel how sharp the rock is 22

under my palm. how small this air pocket. gasping inevitable. choppy seas today. swim down, then up. stars pop behind my eyes. when i break the surface water still sloshes in my chest. here ice is only a melting anxiety. a cliff sleeps under the waves, and liquid light glances off a white rock and giggles back in green, wavering green. midnight and the drive back, the tide snoring, the ocean / asleep in the backseat of the car. i fall into the water again, float, eyes half-closed. the pool lights are so bright i can’t see the stars. later i will sleep through a lifetime of julys and ignore the water leaking onto my pillows. it’s just the usual summer displacements, i’ll say. nothing is where it should be. even without headphones the world feels muted / dreamlike / unreal. the ocean empties and refills itself. at the beach where the air is pink, i try to hold onto the sea but feel it slipping away like a promise, until the tide’s heartbeat tells me what i already know: that the ocean is always the same ocean. that breathing is inevitable. that my heart’s been underwater all this time.

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Margot Armbruster Wormwood mama, remember your cool hand on mine. remember, I was twelve and consumed with thinness. remember you lay beside me on the starchy sheets and talked about healing. about your own mother, how you became a kite, straining away from her. about the summer your hair knotted up like moss in the shower drain. mama, remember I asked you why you decided to live. and remember, you pressed your fingers gentle against my forehead, remember, you spoke in a low voice about the chapel ringing with sound, the amber light streaming through the windows. you told me you cried. I cried

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with your arms wrapped around my back. I cried because the body can never forget. mama, I cried because I can never forget that winter, the winter the body I tried to carve out of marble became glass, the winter I held death in my mouth and proclaimed myself full.

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Suzanne Antelme One Day His hellos like snow in the desert like gulping air after five years under.

Him saying your name like first summer rain like sunset orange like tumblers in a lock like you might be his.

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Ruby Evans St. Helens, Washington Under 17 days of ash, Robert Landsburg rises and wipes dust from his backpack.

Unwraps his camera; unwinds film from its casing.

He’s up on shaking legs; begins to click the shutter release, as the cloud of black and heat recedes, and the air shrieks.

He stands and watches as the mountain implodes.

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Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2017 Congratulations to the commended poets Tashawar Ahmer • India Alldred • Benjamin de Almeida Newton • Mathilda Armiger • Holly Atton • Bianka Barabas • Anna Beekmayer • Aliyah Begum • Bailey Blackburn • Daniel Blokh • Jenny Burville-Riley • Sophia Carney • Imogen Catsaras • Michelle Cedeno • Isla Chaplin • Jasmine Elise Chapman • Dana Chiueh • Niamh Collins • Angelina Conte • Elizabeth Cook • Jasmine Cui • Cosima Deetman • Ailsa Elisabeth Dixon • Magnus Dixon • Linnet Drury • Aidan Forster • Emily Franklin • Abigail Green • Yuri Han • Gaia Harper • Emma Hasson • Muireann Hayden • Hal Henderson • Leo Hessian • Anna Humphreys • Kara Jackson • Isabella Jiang • Emma Jones • Naya Jorgensen • Katherine Kim • Frankie Lee • Meredith LeMaître • Jocelyn Leuenberger • Vivian Liao • Mukahang Limbu • Udit Mahalingam • Madison Matthews • Amelie Maurice-Jones • Oisín McDonnellGrundy • Richelle Mowatt • Amélie Nixon • Kia O’Driscoll • Natalia Orlovsky • Andrew Pettigrew • Rosie Plumb • Em Power • Ananya Prakash • Eliza Rai • Ella Roberts • Kitty Robinson • Poonam Sahoo • Eliza Sapara-Grant • Shivani Sekar • Maia Siegel • Jamie Smith • Elif Soyler • Kyle Spencer • Carolyn Stein • Sarah Juniper Storace Nelson • Melissa Stuart • Eloise Tara Unerman • Rachel Tait • Stephanie Themistocleous • James Turner • Jemima Webster • Mary Webster • Fox White • Jade Wilkinson • Rachel Wilkinson • Maria Woodford • Shaw Worth • Rosie Wright • Alannah Young • Seemin Zaki Mohammed • Joyce Zhou.

Read the poems by both winning and commended poets in our online anthologies Look out for the online anthologies of winning and commended Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2017. For details, visit poetrysociety.org.uk/foyle 28

Foyle Foundation The Foyle Foundation is an independent grant making 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 increased its support and enabled the competition to develop and grow to become one of the premier literary awards in the country. foylefoundation.org.uk

The Poetry Society The Poetry Society is the leading poetry organisation in the UK. For over 100 years we’ve been a lively and passionate source of energy and ideas, opening up and promoting poetry to an ever-growing community. We run acclaimed international poetry competitions for adults and young people, and publish The Poetry Review, one of the most influential poetry magazines in the English-speaking world. With innovative education and commissioning programmes, and a packed calendar of performances and readings, The Poetry Society champions poetry for all ages. 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. Support us by donating at poetrysociety.org.uk/donate

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Young writers and The Poetry Society As well as the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, The Poetry Society offers lots of other opportunities for young poets interested in writing for the page or exploring spoken word: Young Poets Network is The Poetry Society’s online platform for young poets up to the age of 25. It’s for everyone interested in poets and poetry – whether you’ve just started out, or you’re a seasoned poetry reader and writer. You’ll find features, challenges and competitions to inspire your own writing, as well as new writing from young poets, and advice and guidance from the rising and established stars of the poetry scene. We partner with amazing organisations, from National Maritime Museum and the V&A, to the British Library, sparking ideas that travel far beyond the page.

For updates, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @youngpoetsnet. youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk Poetry Society Youth Membership is for aspiring writers and poetry enthusiasts aged 11-18. Members receive poetry goodies, opportunities for feedback, The Poetry Society’s newspaper Poetry News, and other benefits. poetrysociety.org.uk/membership

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Schools and The Poetry Society Foyle teaching resources, including lesson plans and online versions of both the winning and commended Foyle Young Poets anthologies, are available on our website. poetrysociety.org.uk/fypresources Poetryclass lesson plans and activities, covering all Key Stages and exploring many themes and forms of poetry, are easy to search and free to download. Each resource has been created by our team of poet-educators and teachers, with hands-on experience of developing an enthusiasm for poetry in the classroom. Find Poetryclass on our dedicated site: resources.poetrysociety.org.uk Page Fright is an online resource, bringing historical poetry to life with contemporary spoken word performances. Page Fright poets such as Benjamin Zephaniah perform their own work, and explore historical poems afresh. Resources and writing prompts help you create your own poetry. poetrysociety.org.uk/pagefright Poets in Schools help develop an understanding of and enthusiasm for poetry across all Key Stages. Whether you want a one-off workshop or a long-term residency, an INSET session for staff or a poet-led assembly, The Poetry Society can find the right poet for you. poetrysociety.org.uk/education School Membership connects your school with all that poetry has to offer. School members receive books, resources, posters, Poetry News and The Poetry Review (secondary only), as well as free access to our Poets in Schools service. poetrysociety.org.uk/membership Follow us on Twitter @PoetryEducation or sign up to our schools e-bulletin by emailing educationadmin@poetrysociety.org.uk

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Enter the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018 Judges: Caroline Bird and Daljit Nagra Enter your poems – change your life! The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2018 is open to any writer aged 11 to 17 (inclusive) until the closing date of 31 July 2018. The competition is completely free to enter and poems can be on any theme or subject.

Individuals can enter more than one poem, but 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.

Prizes include mentoring, places on a week-long residential writing course at an Arvon Centre, publication in a prestigious anthology, and much more. Winners also benefit from ongoing support and encouragement from The Poetry Society via publication, performance and internship opportunities.

How to enter: please read the updated competition rules, published in full at foyleyoungpoets.org. If you are 13-17 you can enter online or by post using the entry form opposite. If you are 11-12 you will need permission from a parent or guardian. If you are entering by post you will need to print a permission form from our website.

School entries: you can enter a set of poems by post or online using our simple submission form. Every school that enters 25 students or more will receive a £50 discount on our Poets in Schools service!

Want a FREE set of anthologies, resources and posters for your class?

Email your name, address and request to fyp@poetrysociety.org.uk For full rules and instructions on how to enter visit our website: foyleyoungpoets.org 32

Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2018 Entry Form Individuals aged 13-17: complete and post this form or enter online at foyleyoungpoets.org Schools: to submit multiple entries, use our online form for teachers or download a class entry form from foyleyoungpoets.org. Closing date: 31 July 2018 Name ____________________________________________________________ Address _________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________ Postcode ____________________ Country ____________________________ Your school ______________________________________________________ Your tel MOBILE PREFERRED ____________________________________________ Your email

__________________________________________________________________________________

Date of birth __________________ No. of poems submitted ______________ Gender

MALE

Ethnic group

FEMALE

OTHER

________________________________ PLEASE SPECIFY

________________________________________________________________________________

This information helps us to monitor and carry out our activities as required by our funders and in accord with the charitable aims of The Poetry Society. All personal information is treated confidentially.

I confirm that I am 13-17 years old and I have read I have read and agree to the competition rules (online at: poetrysociety.org.uk/fyprules) To enter by post, write the entrant’s name and postcode on the reverse of each poem submitted and include a completed entry form. Send to: FYP 2018, The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton St, London WC2H 9BX, or enter online at foyleyoungpoets.org The Poetry Society has created a FREE online community, Young Poets Network, to keep you updated with opportunities for young writers aged 13-25. To join the mailing list, tick here

“These poems illustrate that the future of poetry is in very safe hands.”

– Kayo Chingonyi, Judge

foyleyoungpoets.org