Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award
Latest News: August 2008
The competition is now closed for entries! Thank you to everyone who sent in their poems to the competition. We've received well over 12,000 poems from nearly 5,500 young poets across the world!
The judges will be deliberating over the next few weeks to pick the best one hundred poets to become Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2008. Winners will be announced publicly on National Poetry Day, Thursday 9th October 2009.
July 2008
We are delighted to announce that Eva Salzman will be joining Ian McMillan as one of this years' judges for the competition.
June 2008
For World Environment Day, 5 June 2008, the Poetry Society has released special Eco Poetry Packs to encourage cross-subject activities in secondary schools.
Please Note:
All the past FYP winners' poems are available for free on our website, but due to the high demand for printed resources we have run out of copies of The Wouldbegoods and FYP posters.
You might want to have a look at our other education resources instead, such as the Poems on the Underground posters. And email us with your name, address, school if you'd like to join our education mailing list.
Over 17 years old? Don't despair you can still discover your potential with the National Poetry Competition 2008.
Click here to read the press release. And scroll down to read the rules.
Judges 2008
Ian McMillan
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Poet, comedian & broadcaster Ian McMillan hosts weekly hit radio show The Verb. He’s Yorkshire Planetarium’s Poet in Space, Poet-in-Residence for The Academy of Urbanism and Barnsley FC, Humberside Police’s Beat Poet, Yorkshire TV’s Investigative Poet and a regular on Newsnight Review, The Mark Radcliffe Show, The Today Programme, You & Yours, The Culture Show, Never Mind The Full Stops… and Have I Got News For You? His rip-roaring poetry shows are legendary. Cats make him sneeze. www.ian-mcmillan.co.uk and www.uktouring.org.uk/ian-mcmillan
Eva Salzman
Eva grew up in Brooklyn and on Long Island where she worked as a dancer, and then later as a choreographer. It is this eclectic background that has led to work in cross-arts projects with artists, dancers and singers; Eva wrote an opera for the 2005 Buxton Festival (composer: Ian McQueen). She has also worked as Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Warwick University and at Ruskin College, Oxford, where she edited an anthology of writing by staff and students.
Her recent collection, Double Crossing: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2004), was a Poetry Book Society Reccomendation. Eva now lives and works in London.
Rules
Please note, FYP is now closed for entries until Spring 2009! New anthologies will be available then as well, featuring poems by the best fifteen Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2008.
If you're aged 17 or over, you can still enter our National Poetry Competition.
FYP is about what you want to write. So you can enter poems written in class, or poems you've written at home, from exercises or from your own imaginings!
You can enter poems on any theme, and of any length, and in any shape you like. Entry is completely free and you can enter as many poems as you like.
You'll need to be aged 11-17 on or before that date in order to enter.
Prizes
- Fifteen overall winners aged 11-17, including three international winners, will have their poems printed in the winners' anthology
- Five 11-14 year olds will win a short residency to their school by a leading poet
- Fifteen 15-17 year old winners will attend a week-long residential course at one of the prestigious Arvon Centres
- The three schools who inspire the most entries will receive a special selection of books from Faber & Faber, Bloodaxe Books and Salt Publishing for their libraries
All of the one hundred winners are invited to the prize-giving ceremony, and win prizes including books published by Faber & Faber, Bloodaxe Books and Salt Publishing, posters and one year's Youth Membership.
Previous winners have gone on to be published in books and anthologies from Carcanet and tall-lighthouse, as well as magazines such as Acumen and on the Poems on the Underground project. You can also catch some of the winners reading at festivals across the UK, such as the Torbay Festival.
Young Poet Pages
Don't forget that we are always gathering poems, reviews and interviews for our Youth Members' Poetry Pages. The first issue is available now, called Love and Railways, edited by former Foyle Young Poet of the Year, Julia Rampen. Remember, you'll need to be a youth member to submit to the youth pages (but not to submit to FYP!)
History
Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2007
The latest Foyle anthology, The Wouldbegoods, is launched in March 2008. You can also listen to some of the poems in our Audio Archives
Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2006
Radio Seventeen, featured poems by the fifteen top winners and three international winners.
Radio Seventeen Image © istockphoto/Kamruzzaman Ratan
Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2005
Featuring poems by the fifteen winners in the anthology When the Thunder Woke Me
Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2004
Featuring poems by the fifteen winners in the anthology And The Air Sang
Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2003
Featuring poems by the fifteen winners in the anthology Passport Pictures
Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2002
Featuring poems by the fifteen winners in the anthology The floor would tremble if your feet could touch it..
Foyle oung Poets of the Year Award 2001
Featuring poems by the fifteen winners in the anthology New Life.
Simon Elvin Young Poets of the Year Award 2000
Featuring poems by the fifteen winners in the anthology Fairy Tale Matches.
Simon Elvin Young Poets of the Year Award 1999
Featuring poems by the fifteen winners in the anthology Hypothesis.
Simon Elvin Young Poets of the Year Award 1998
Featuring poems by the thirteen overall winners in the anthology The Small Plastic Things in Life.
FYP logo designed by Siavash Pournouri
On this page:
The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is Britain's most prestigious poetry prize for young writers between the ages of 11-17. Each year we look for a hundred of the best young poets in the UK and beyond, as well as some of the most active poetry schools with special prizes for both 11-14 and 15-17 year olds. The closing date each year is 31st July.
Quicklinks
- History - winning poems
- Click here for teacher's resources, including free lesson plans
- Competitions
- Become a Poetry Society Member
- Benefits of Membership
- Help with your Poetry
- Young Member's Pages
- Press Release - Anouncing Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award Winners 2007
Click to email us
Tel 020 7420 9892
Visit our Youth Members' Poetry Pages. Issue #1, Love and Railways, is online now, edited by Julia Rampen. Issue 2 will be available in Autumn. You have to be a Youth Member to submit your poems.
Swithun Cooper
Young Poets of the Year
2000:
"Winning the competition was the first time I'd had any real feedback for my writing - a lot
of teenagers write in secret because they're worried people will make fun of them. It's very important for young writers to get encouragement they wouldn't necessarily get from school or their family."
Since winning the competition, Swithun has been published in Carcanet's New Poetries III, Phoenix New Writing, Avocado magazine, the London Magazine and other journals,
as well as writing
for several arts magazines.
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