The Poetry Society

Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award

The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is the premier competition for poets aged 11-17, accepting entries from March to July each year.  It has its own page here.

Each year the top 100 young poets become Youth Members of the Poetry Society to help support their writing year round.

The Poetry Society actively promotes the top young poets who come out of this competition.  We do this through putting their names out to festival and event programmers, introducing them to other areas of our work, and commissioning them to contribute to our Youth Membership pages on this website.  One example of a project involving several alumni of the Foyle Young Poet Awards was the 2007 Poetry Day at Buckingham Palace. For film footage and further information, please visit our Buckingham Palace page.

How Teachers can benefit from the Competition

The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award can be used in the classroom in several ways, not least in the free lesson plan still available for download.  We also provide free posters, postcards and anthologies for any young poet who is interested, or class sets for teachers who think their class would be able to use them.  Contact us on fyp@poetrysociety.org.uk for more information about these offers. 

The hundred winners, naturally, find a new value in poetry, but simply the fact that poetry is valued highly by something outside the classroom is a positive message to every entrant.  There are also several stories of the pupil you would never have predicted being one of the judges' choices.  We're happy to receive entries in class sets, providing a relevant form each year, which means you don't have to single out any of your students.

And there's also a good reason from the point of view of the school - each year we send poets to the schools of five winners, and, with the support of publishers Bloodaxe and Faber and Faber, we send a collection of books to the schools who have inspired the greatest number of poets to enter from their school.

 

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