Congratulations Nathan! Foyle Young Poets…
A huge congratulations to 16-year-old Rotherham Young Writer Nathan Graham – one of the 15 winning poets of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2025!
This year a record-breaking 28,344 poems were entered into the competition from 10,920 young poets. Young people from 135 countries took part from as far afield as Botswana, Fiji, Vietnam, and Venezuela, as well as the four corners of the UK. From these poems this year’s judges Colette Bryce and Will Harris selected 100 winners, made up of 15 top poets and 85 commended poets. Devised and run by The Poetry Society, and developed with long-standing partnership funding from The Foyle Foundation, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is firmly established as one of the world’s leading writing competitions for young people aged 11 to 17 years. The judges, poets Will Harris and Colette Bryce, had a difficult job choosing the top 100 winners but were inspired by what they read.
Colette reflected on the experience of being a judge: “Reading thousands of poems in a short period is a noisy and thankfully rare occurrence. It defined the end of summer for me, as I wandered around in a cloud of voices and slowly but surely set aside the poems I wanted to read again. Fast forward to a lovely day in London where Will Harris and I talked passionately about our choices – some of which, miraculously, overlapped, and some we brought to each other’s attention. I’m encouraged for the future of our ancient and ever-changing art, and amazed by the confidence, humour, invention, curiosity, and sheer intelligence on display. It’s an honour to bring a selection of these poems to a wider audience and I commend everyone who entrusted us with their writing.”
Will shared these thoughts: “It was a joy to read through thousands of poems of wonder, mourning, rage, silliness, longing, invention, and humour, and pick out a hundred poems which, in combining some (or all) of those qualities, stayed with us. It’s tempting to use “precocious” to describe work like this, but that can feel patronising. These are poets who are not just developing their art early but – as with poets of any age and place – seeing clearly and writing truly. Under their gaze, a complex world is made brutally simple, and simple truths shatter into complexity. I can’t wait to see how these brilliant writers continue to transform our world.”
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!