Congratulations Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2022

Huge congratulations to 15-year-old Isabelle Pollard of Rotherham Young Writers – one of the 15 winning poets of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2022! Lola Forbes-Egan (for our Mixing Roots project) was also highly commended in the competition. Both follow in the footsteps of previous winners from our South Yorkshire groups including Georgie Woodhead, Lauren Hollingsworth Smith & Claire Carlile.

More than 6,600 poets aged 11-17 submitted over 13,500 poems into this year’s competition. Young people from 100 countries entered the competition from as far afield as Nepal, Panama and Serbia, and 98 percent of postcodes in the UK.

This year’s poet-judges Anthony Anaxagorou and Mona Arshi had a difficult job choosing the top 100 winners, with Anthony saying,

“The extraordinary range and breadth of the writing in this year’s Foyle Young Poets competition 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.”

Judge Mona Arshi added, “It was both a pleasure and a privilege to judge this year’s Foyle competition. We were impressed by the sheer variety of approaches as well the diversity of forms employed… Many poems we encountered vibrated with truth and wonder, so many poems employed a slant glaze to arrive at a simple universal emotional truth.”

Huge congratulations to the top 100 winning poets, who were announced at London’s National Theatre on 4 November 2022 at the first in-person ceremony for the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award since 2019.

You can read the winning poems here
Massive thanks to The Poetry Society for all you do to support and encourage poets of all ages!