Lullabies of Distant Traffic: Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award Winners Anthology 2022

Foyle Young Poets of the Year Anthology

“To be part of such a joyful festivity of language, of experiences, of identities is a privilege. It is a wonderfully heady feeling to belong to such a community.”

— Liv Goldreich, commended Foyle Young Poet 2020 & 2021, and top 15 winner 2022

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 40 0

Cover: James Brown, jamesbrown.info

© The Poetry Society & authors, 2023

The title of this anthology, Lullabies of Distant Traffic, is from Zahra Rafiq’s poem ‘The Oyster’, see page 22

This anthology and our entry forms are available in a range of accessible formats. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at fyp@poetrysociety.org.uk

Lullabies of Distant Traffic

Poems by the Foyle Young

Poets of the Year 2022

Acknowledgements

The Poetry Society is deeply grateful for the funding and commitment of the Foyle Foundation and for the ongoing support of Arts Council England: together they enable the running of the competition and publication of this anthology.

Thank you to 2022’s judges Anthony Anaxagorou and Mona Arshi for the time and passion they put into reading the poems and selecting these winning entries. We also thank the team of poets, artists and supporters who contributed their skills to this year’s Award: Ella Duffy, Sarah Fletcher, Rachel Long, Gazelle Mba, Josh Seigal and Phoebe Stuckes who helped with the judging process; Savannah Brown, the Award Patron; Clare Pollard, Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and former Foyle Young Poets Mukahang Limbu and Phoebe Stuckes for performing at the Award ceremony; James Brown for designing our artwork; Chris Riddell for his illustrations of the Top 15 winners; Arvon Foundation for hosting the Foyle Young Poets’ residentials; Cecilia Knapp for co-tutoring this year’s course; Marcus Stanton Communications for raising awareness of the competition; and our network of educators and poets across the UK for helping us to inspire so many young writers. Thank you also to Carcanet, Forward Arts Foundation, ignitionpress, Picador, Poems on the Underground and tall-lighthouse for providing winners’ prizes. Finally, we applaud the enthusiasm and dedication of the young people and teachers who make the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award the great success it is today.

In 2023, we welcome Jonathan Edwards and Jane Yeh as our Award judges, and look forward to finding new voices and encouraging a new community of young people into poetry with them.

foyleyoungpoets.org

*Content warning: these poems tackle challenging themes including eating disorders and use of graphic imagery

Introduction

All of the poems in this anthology were written by young writers aged eleven to seventeen years old. They are the winning entries to an amazing competition for young poets – the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award – which has been run by The Poetry Society since 2001 to find, celebrate and support the very best young writers from around the world.

We hope you enjoy reading these poems. Maybe you or someone you know should enter next year!

In 2022 we received over 13,500 poems from more than 6,600 young poets from across the nations of the UK and around the world. Writers from 100 countries entered the competition from as far afield as Afghanistan, Namibia, Qatar and Myanmar. The judges, Anthony Anaxagorou and Mona Arshi, had the challenge of selecting 100 winners: the 15 top poets published here, and 85 commended poets. The competition continues to showcase the best of the world’s young poets, and its scale and global reach demonstrates what a huge achievement it is to be selected as one of our winners.

It has been an inspiring experience for the judges. Mona told us, ‘It was both a pleasure and a privilege to judge this year’s competition. We were impressed by the sheer variety of approaches as well the diversity of forms employed – we found sestinas and ghazals rubbing alongside prose poems and hybrid inventions. So many of the poems we read woke up the ear and gave us something we hadn’t heard before. From ‘Azure fathoms pummel the shimmering sand’ in Freya Patterson’s “Anastasia” to the aching image of ‘rusty padlock breath and hollow rasps’ in Eric Pak’s “Aegean Prayer”, so many gifts were offered in their lines. Many of the poems we encountered vibrated with wonder, while others employed a slant gaze to arrive at a simple universal, emotional truth.’

Anthony added, ‘The extraordinary range and breadth of the writing in this year’s Young Poets Award slowed our reading down, asked us to inhabit a pool of poetics and voices, while encouraging us to think about tomorrow’s poetry in fresh and innovative ways. The writing was at once deeply personal, with an acute sensitivity to local and global issues. We encountered poems which drew attention and thinking towards our struggling planet, poems which complicated the identities we inherit and how such burgeoning minds come to navigate the world. There were formal poems about resilience, despair, joy and bewilderment. Poems which knew and poems which didn’t. To witness such an open display of aliveness to the world, to the systems, inequalities and rhythms we live amongst, confirmed the future of poetry as being vibrant, dynamic and restless. Trying to find “the best” poems is obviously an impossible task, so Mona and I settled instead on trying to draw out the poems which not only spoke to the present moment, but also to the moments that will constitute human life for years to come.’

The winning entries reveal a generation of young poets who aren’t afraid to use their voices to offer kindness, humour and hope. You’ll encounter poets here from across the UK, Ireland, Thailand and USA, representing the wide age range of the competition. Please note that some of the poems tackle challenging themes, such as eating disorders, and we’ve marked in the contents where you may encounter graphic imagery.

We thank the young poets for their fearlessness, the strength of their imaginations and the power of their words. We hope that this anthology will inspire even more young people to write, share their work and enter the competition.

Foyle Young Poets

The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is at the core of The Poetry Society’s extensive education programme, and it plays an influential role in shaping contemporary British poetry. Many of the most exciting poets writing today started their writing careers by taking part in this Award. Here are just a few of the former winners we’d like to congratulate for publishing their first pamphlets this year: Helen Bowell for The Barman (Bad Betty), Mukahang Limbu for Mother of Flip Flops (Outspoken Press) and Nadia Lines for Stephen the Phlebotomist (Nine Pens Press). Sarah Fletcher released her third pamphlet with Outspoken Press, and Luke Samuel Yates published The Mystery Shopper with the Poetry Business/Smith|Doorstop.

As just a taste of other recent achievements by our young poets, we congratulate Iona Mandal who was appointed Young Poet Laureate of Birmingham; Daniel Wale who was Warwickshire’s Young Poet Laureate; Briancia Mullings, highly commended in the Forward Prize for her Foyle Young Poets’ winning poem “Queen’s Speech”; and Holly Hopkins whose book The English Summer (Penned in the Margins) was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in the Forward Prizes.

In 2023, our search begins for the latest cohort of exciting young poets. 100 winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award will receive a range of brilliant prizes, including a year’s youth membership of The Poetry Society and a goody bag stuffed full of books donated by our generous supporters. The Poetry Society continues to support winners throughout their careers, providing publication, performance and development opportunities. The top 15 poets will also be part of a sustained mentoring programme. poetrysociety.org.uk

Camille Gabbert

The Immigrant in Me Is a Success Story

‘Medals can deflect bullets’, An old story,

I remember being five by a fire that is burning all through my house, Grandfather’s cheeks like leather when he smiles, Soldier in the square safe from the metal round his collarbone, And even now he is smoking –Dent in the gold where his voice would be Like

Being something could save your life. Love is a study in flaws. In struggle everything is a metaphor. Back home

Education is not the sitting in the classroom but The hope that you will gain some secret knowledge that will Keep you out of the kitchen.

Grandmother sweating over the wok’s flame dreaming As her son’s heart is pushed further into his desk.

Daniel Liu

Night Market Apologia

‘These aren’t people. These are animals.’ – Donald

Trump

Down the black river of asphalt, besides the smoking stands, the metal bodies in pale

warm streetlight flooded with the smell of spiced lamb, a woman with her cheeks

weighed down by decades of hot oil takes a seat on a Kikkoman soy sauce bucket

flipped on its lid. Her hands, drowned in folds and lines, tremble carefully. Her

lips open, a thin blade of tongue wavers carelessly. In frozen spells, all her screaming

and crying and calling and yelling and color slide under the heat of the blue

period – a well-worn phase. The officer spoke bluntly. All the words curled up

like the leaves of sensitive plants, prone to touch. She was prone to touch, her past hardened into a great ice block, reaching deeper and deeper toward complete stillness, toward the slow drunk moon. My son, she says. My

son, they took him. Bright lanterns hem the pavement with rippled

progress, a portrait of dead fish, of red meat, of good kids working next to their families. He was a good kid. He didn’t do anything wrong. What if they send him back? Somewhere, a cracked porcelain vase dappled with hundreds of painted chrysanthemums

sells at auction for millions. Somewhere, a family vase cracks. All the pieces

scattered across a seabed.

Eric Pak

An Aegean Prayer

After Ocean Vuong and Lydia Wei

I celebrate my tenth birthday by shuffling towards my father’s body planted in the sand.

Appa do you remember me?

I call to him. The answer is his rusty padlock breath and hollow rasps each time his chest undulates towards the sky.

Salted air billows through his shirt. White sand congeals with water into hazel shards the same way liquid hops transform a man into a beast. A wino.

One last time I try to wake my father up. Tap his leatherskin cheeks. Run my fingers through his leaking hair. He doesn’t stir. Wonder if the tides shifted a decade ago. And now I wait for the waves to recede.

Freya Madeleine Patterson

Anastasia

Azure fathoms pummel the shimmering sand, And a faint melodic tune threads into the salty sea air, Almost silent, but, You hear it.

Perhaps the seaweed-like tangled mane of scarlet escaped others, But you, with your keen hawk eyes, spot it.

Trembling fingers outstretched as you run them through the tendrils, After proceeding up the cascade, you falter. The skull.

A pearly white hollow husk. Something moves.

A flurrying flinch of fingers.

And a flutter, faint as a butterfly’s wings, coming from something. The sky black as ink.

Her skin as delicate as feathers.

Your breath as soft as smoke.

Rising, slowly, with a bemused gait morphing into a graceful lilt, Anastasia holds you close without intimacy or beauty, No, Anastasia is something darker.

And you, always with a remark or quip, make no sound as you go down, Only one word.

Isaac Meredith

Hoarder

The hoarder’s secret is that They know life is in the past. This object, that object Help make the home You are always wanting, The little space like a shadow cast By memory. The memory is not A kingdom of soup cans, But if they left you, If they left you forever –Do you have the patience for that grief? Every name has a date.

Isabelle Pollard

In a Different Version of This After Brian Russell

I’m too young to understand, playing on the street somewhere, bruises littering my kneecaps, a smile etched across my cheeks, Lelli Kellys on my feet. I am anywhere but that tobacco-ridden leather sofa.

In a different version of this, Mum makes the call on the powder-blue house phone, and the wallpaper doesn’t ooze generational secrets. In a different version of this, the paramedic clutches my hand and I’m given a cup

of cheap tea from your old, chipped fishing mug, that I saved up to buy you with three months’ worth of pocket money. In the ideal version of this, the image of your face falling, your head lolling, isn’t the memory I’m stuck with.

You’re still here in your armchair, pipe in hand, Bowie on the vinyl player.

Liv Goldreich

afikneomai: I arrive

Great-grandfather’s family worked at a matza factory. Making unleavened bread like brittle leather soles, choice purveyor for a holy week after the purging of crumbs. Baking bread is too civil for mouths to touch. The grounding of stones to pulse the wheat and the sweeping of floors: avak is not only negligence but ghost conscience. Clumps like earlobes thumbed and baked. A charming cousin gathers the children with full fists, receives admirers as coins emerge (he sweeps behind hairlines). Breaking afikoman like noses, an uncle’s teeth rattling. Arnost/Ernst/Mordechai/Motti does not yet know what it shall mean to doctor. A stethoscope is the afikoman hidden in the reflection of his dead mother’s best spoon, the leaves of his schoolbooks, this undying hunger. He takes matza like a palm and does not taste salted bones, how one day across the world a man’s son will draw up in a long car and say I owe you my existence/we owe you our lives. The locusts drone as Motti fits his wrist into the samech, the union of thumb and index. The tongue crumbles like a decimated flag.

Martine Maugüé

For Unspoken Confessions

Thin grass moon hides eve slows light

Ghost buds stars sleep dawn stalls bright

Hands touch eyes meet no apt words

Chance gone lone wraith moon aches white

Jenna Hunt

Sick Girls Don’t Write Poetry

sick girls don’t binge eat their body weight in Morrisons sticky hummus selection until they sneeze up bloodied chickpeas // no, sick girls scrape dry toothbrushes down their oesophagus like they’re scouring the edges of a toilet bowl // sick girls don’t hide the rubescent henna fading to milked clay on their hips in the exact spot hugged with underwear made from boiled silkworms, hand crafted with their cousin’s stolen tweezers // no, sick girls disembody sharpeners and play tic tac toe on their wrists // sick girls don’t type their texts out in the notes section of their phones four times over before sending // no, sick girls never reply at all // sick girls don’t pretend to be three years old rubbing their face in TV static just to pin up the corners of their shredding lips again // no, sick girls chug straight vodka outside the strip clubs that say Angel in some shade of galactic neon // sick girls don’t get into fist fights with their own foreheads until the front row cinema-viewing of them stripping chest-bare at their non-existent pet rabbit’s funeral fades from their internal film reel // no, sick girls wash their hands with scummy bar soap six times over // sick girls don’t look like other sick girls // no, sick girls are all Melanie Martinez songs and the fifth scroll down on this evening’s newsfeed // sick girls don’t write poetry and I am not a sick girl.

Content warning: eating disorders

Oenone Wirth

we’re having a conversation about the dead girls

do you remember the dream we talked about where you dredge me from the river skin blue and tissue rotted to grave wax or find me concertinaed in the suitcase neatly folded in the trunk of the car body packed under the earth – three feet deep flesh rotting slowly, mouth a little ajar?

i wake up and the dead girls stand about my bed –pulled clean from their homogenous obituary they sit beside me at breakfast and in the evening i comb their hair in the bath –pull free the leaves while they muddy the water black. occasionally one will press her cold lips to the shell of my ear

‘blunt force to the adam’s apple causes shock,’ she whispers, ‘if you can hit it hard enough.’

when we leave the house they stick close our bodies one body until we reach the open spaces when they unfurl arms and tip themselves – squealing –down hills and playground slides like dandelion seeds lost to the wind ‘not too far,’ i’m shouting, ‘not too far.’

yes, they’re sat with us now, the dead girls. let me pop the kettle on, i’ll make us all a cup of tea.

Content warning: graphic imagery

Scarlett Timlett-Sheehan

recipe for ending winter

knead the dirt like dough you’ve made bread with your father this is just repeating what you know

the earth breaks against your knuckles crumbles and collects under your nails bright and crisp as winter buckles

the soil shifts between your fingers warm and worn and awake as the sun finally lingers

sew the seeds like stitches patch up the patient now wait. this is spring’s testament

it bears promises of petals, of a rebirth: shoots to roots, head to toes and baskets full of vegetables the ground is forgiving even after the cold grips the air there is a thaw, the frost is clearing

Sienna Mehta

Unrequited

I want to smile at her, so violently I crack wetly open, bare teeth flaking in a boned grin as my eyes shine, yearn to the yellowing moon. My red heart will pulse there, exposed. Embittered. And the world will realise, and maybe –probably weep. Maybe just hush dead silent, piteous.

Sinéad O’Reilly

The Party After Jack Underwood

In the room full of people

I want to be the sort of person you’d turn to If you entered the room blindfolded. Or at least the one who wears Shyness like a handwritten invite.

I’d like to have her laugh Which erupts like a broken hose

Fixing at the wrong time, or his shoulders Which people love to lay their heads on. While my skin is sunburnt sea, yours is ice-cubes In grape juice, and I try to think of something To say but my gut twinges like a dampened String when you walk over and sometimes I want to curl my knees to my chest and crawl Inside a guitar so I don’t say anything stupid.

Tara Tulshyan

Care Package

In my Balikbayan box, Lola finds dried rain and her granddaughter walking down a souvenir shop. She remembers a series of unborn things: a girl teaching herself how to eat American noodles, her stomach over sweetening on oil – already double boiled from last night when she could hear the moon breaking over her roof. Take it as evidence that she was born here. This is where she abandons her western name and remembers mama’s hands, marooned, and still scrubbing the floor tiles, knees asleep, almost begging. She wants to send Lola the name of the town, where sardines are scattered on the road, sharpened by fresh water, because a disaster refused to save them. They are plucked beside the fish, their cheeks still bulbous, draining the water with their bellies, before they are packaged and shipped to another country.

Zahra Rafiq

The Oyster

It trickles upon its journey through A maze of metal-piped clockwork, Digging a grave of wet puddles –You are unsheathed; fulgent in the Harsh and heavy moonlight, mortal Flesh feeble against the coarse eclipse. Its scalding meniscus swallows Exhausted legs, sharply cut, jagged Across your neck. You remember Your childhood; you want to be a Mermaid again – sinless – you remove Your hair catcher and let it fall in Tendrils of dense waves. You are Tamed by the lullabies of distant traffic, Nonchalantly allowing yourself to be Consumed. It creeps into your ears

Until all you can hear is the resounding Echo of futility – atrium. Ventricle. Artery Lungs. Repeat – and then it invades Your airways; alveoli half flooded in Achromatic despair. It attempts to muffle

The sonorous ring of church bells; they Augment, and soon they rip the auditory Nerve, thunderous in their voyage across The amygdala. Your eyes flare open.

Freshly woken from a carnivorous Nightmare, daffodil candlelight infuses the Retina. It stops clinging to you, cascading Like a waterfall emerging from seaweed Depths. Screams of merciless beasts Resuscitate the silence, and it drowns, gushing Upon its descent through the black hole At the bottom of the bathtub.

Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2022

Top 15 winners: Camille Gabbert . Daniel Liu . Eric Pak . Freya

Madeleine Patterson . Isaac Meredith . Isabelle Pollard . Jenna Hunt .

Liv Goldreich . Martine Maugüé . Oenone Wirth . Scarlett TimlettSheehan . Sienna Mehta . Sinéad O’Reilly . Tara Tulshyan . Zahra Rafiq

The Commended poets: Ainah Rashid . Alex Dunton .

Alexander Newman . Alice Robson . Amelia Kerr . Amelie Friess

. Amy Wang . Ana Thompson . Angad Thethi . Anika Kolliboina .

Anna Feng . Anna Yang . Aryan Grover . Ashley Wang . Bea Unwin

. Boudicca Eades . Conan Lam . Daisy Blacklock . Daphne Harries .

Doroti Polgar . Eleanor Gonzales-Poirier . Elise Withey . Elizabeth

Yaria . Erin O’Neill . Evan Copleston . Evie Alam . Florence Smith .

Frankie Martins . Freya Lavery . Georgia-Mae Tan . Harsimran Kaur . Helena Davis . Isadora Vargas Mafort . Ishrat Sattar . Issi Sharp .

Jason F . Jeffrey Yang . Joe Wright . Jomiloju Omoyajowo . Josephine

Gorbold . Katherine Wei . Kyo Lee . Lara Antelo Miles . Lauren Lisk .

Leo Kang Beevers . Lilla Saiker . Lily Cheifetz-Fong . Lola Forbes-Egan

. Lola Henninger . Lotus Hour Mustafa . Lulu Marken . Maabena Nti .

maaria rajput . Mackenzie Duan . Maggie Yang . Maithreyi Bharathi .

Mia Alexander . Mia Scattergood . Michele Liu . Mika Trench . Mimi

Yang . Morouje Sherif . Nerys Stehr . Nicole Banas . Nina Brown .

Nithya Sangampalayam . Ocean Teu . Olivia Talbot . Ore Iews .

Poppy Lamming . Ravneet Kaur . Rose Bedford . Ruben Ferran

See-Schierenberg Galvan . Sara Rosero . Sarah Fathima Mohammed .

Sharon Zhang . Sinead Farrell . Skye Bowdon . Sophia Liu . Ursula

Rowe . Vishnusri Priya Mendu . William Thomas . Zahra Ghaffar .

Zoë Legge . Zoha Khan

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 of people. 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

The 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 enabled the competition to develop and grow to become one of the premier literary awards in the country. foylefoundation.org.uk

Help Young Writers Thrive

The Poetry Society’s work with young people and schools across the UK changes the lives of 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

What Next for Young Writers?

Young Poets Network is The Poetry Society’s free online platform for young poets worldwide 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 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. Young Poets Network also offers a list of competitions, magazines and writing groups which particularly welcome young writers.

Every year we inspire thousands of young writers worldwide to write new poems. Recent challenges explored love, protest, peace, glass, the work of Sylvia Plath and more. We have also published features about reviewing poetry, starting a zine and the relationship between social class and poetry. Each August, we ask Foyle Young Poets to set and judge new writing challenges – could next year be you?

We offer performance opportunities to Young Poets Network challenge winners and in the last year we have taken young poets to perform at Verve Poetry Festival in Birmingham and at Newcastle Poetry Festival too. We ran online celebration events and free writing workshops for all. We also collaborated with the T.S. Eliot Prize and worked with ten young people to review the shortlisted collections. Sign up to our fortnightly newsletter to keep up-to-date with all the events and opportunities we offer. Follow us on Twitter @youngpoetsnet and Instagram @thepoetrysociety for more.

youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk

Schools and The Poetry Society

Foyle Award teaching resources, including lesson plans and online versions of the winning and commended Foyle Young Poets anthologies, are available on our website at 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

Poets in Schools help develop an understanding of and enthusiasm for poetry across all Key Stages. Whether you are looking for a oneoff workshop or a long-term residency, an INSET session for staff or a poet-led assembly, The Poetry Society will find the right poet for you. Online and in-person options available. 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 poet–teacher network, Cloud Chamber. poetrysociety.org. uk/membership

Follow us on Twitter @PoetryEducation or sign up to our schools

e-bulletin by emailing educationadmin@poetrysociety.org.uk

Enter the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2023

Judges: Jonathan Edwards & Jane Yeh

Enter your poems – change your life! The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2023 is open to any writer aged 11 to 17 (inclusive) until the closing date of 31 July 2023. The competition is completely free to enter and poems can be on any theme or subject. Prizes include poetry goodies, mentoring, writing courses, publication in a prestigious anthology and much more. Winners also benefit from ongoing support and encouragement from The Poetry Society via publication, performance and work experience opportunities.

How to enter: please read the updated competition rules, published in full at foyleyoungpoets.org. You can send us your poems online through our website, or by post. If you are aged 11–12 you will need permission from a parent or guardian to enter. You 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.

Teacher Trailblazers: each year the Award recognizes outstanding poetry teachers. To nominate a teacher or librarian who has made a difference in your school, email fyp@poetrysociety.org.uk and tell us what makes them great.

School entries: teachers can enter sets of poems by post or online using our simple submission form. Every school that enters has the chance to win a free classroom visit from a poet.

Want a FREE set of anthologies and posters for your class? Send your name, address and request to fyp@poetrysociety.org.uk

Now YOU can be part of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award

Send us your poems by 31 July 2023 and next year YOUR work could be read by thousands of people all over the world in an anthology like this one.

Enter online for free at foyleyoungpoets.org

For full rules and instructions, visit foyleyoungpoets.org

“To witness such an open display of aliveness to the world, to the systems, inequalities and rhythms we live amongst, confirmed the future of poetry as being vibrant, dynamic and restless.”

– Anthony Anaxagorou, Judge of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2022