Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award
2008: Now Open!
News: July 2008
We are delighted to announce that Eva Salzman will be joining Ian McMillan as one of this years judges for the competition. Eva is a native New Yorker now living in London, her latest collection Double Crossing: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe 2004), was a Poetry Book Society reccomendation.
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.
You can enter your poems online by clicking the logo:
Teachers can use our Class Set Entry Form
to enter whole classes
available here as PDF or Word document
You can send your poems by post, with an entry form. Please send your poems and entry form to: FYP 2008 (W), The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX.
Please Note:
Due to high demand of resources for this year's competition we have now run out of the 2007 winners' anthology, The Wouldbegoods, and FYP posters.
But don't worry because you can still request resources and enter the competition!
Teachers can still request previous Foyle Booklets, FYP 2008 postcards, and some special Poems on the Underground posters from our resource archive.
Plus we still have individual postcard entry forms, and you can request one by sending a C5 stamped, self addressed envelope to the same address.
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
.jpg)
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
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 can even come back and enter more of your poems at any time before the closing date of July 31 2008. You'll need to be aged 11-17 on or before that date in order to enter. If you turn 18 just before then, you can enter our National Poetry Competition instead.
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
At the moment you might have your hands full with entering for the 2008 competition, but don't forget we are always gathering poems, reviews and interviews for our Youth Members' Poetry Pages. The first issue will be available online shortly...
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 will be online shortly, and we're always pleased to receive your submissions for future editions.
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.
Disclaimer | Credits