Congratulations! Foyle Young Poets 2024
A huge congratulations to 17-year-old Charlie Jolley Hive Collection Poet/Sheffield Young Writer – one of the 15 winning poets of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2024!
Charlie was also in the top 15 in 2023 – a huge achievement. This year the competition had over 17,000 poems (!) She follows in the footsteps of previous winners from our South Yorkshire groups including Georgie Woodhead, Lauren Hollingsworth Smith & Claire Carlile. Young people from 113 countries entered the competition from as far afield as Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Madagascar and Sri Lanka, as well as all over the UK. The winners were chosen by Vanessa Kisuule and Jack Underwood, who said:
Vanessa says: “This year’s entries took me to many wondrous and unexpected places. I loved the poems that were playful with form and language and the poems that stood in humble awe at the beauty of nature. Some poems made me cackle and others made my stomach twist in recognition of the pain and struggle they depicted. Jack and I were awestruck at how precocious and assured these poets are. Amongst them are the future stars of the poetry world and I’m honoured to have had this glimpse into the crystal ball.”
Jack says: “…it was genuinely restorative to see so many poems written by young people, while initially daunting, reassured me that poetry is healthier than ever, and continues to lure fresh minds into its weird, millennia-old conversation. I was impressed by those poets replying to the older, more formally regular traditions, and how deftly they managed things like metre and rhyme, but also by those poets finding new shapes, structures and cadences for their concerns. Most of all I was impressed by how imaginatively and wholeheartedly these poets ventured into the world, asked questions, and replied to it – with tenderness, social conscience, and novelty of thought and phrase.”
Winners of the award receive a fantastic range of prizes to help develop their writing. The top 15 poets are invited to attend a residential writing course at The Hurst, Arvon centre in Shropshire; and all 100 winners receive a year’s youth membership of The Poetry Society and a bag full of books donated by generous publishers. The Poetry Society continues to support winners throughout their careers providing publication, performance and development opportunities, and access to a paid internship programme.
If you’re a young poet, sign up the our free Young Poets Network e-newsletter to hear about all the Poetry Society’s opportunities for young poets to submit their work, perform their poems and further their writing skills. Explore the Young Poets Network for regular writing challenges, articles about poetry, events, workshops and more.
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!