“Being a Foyle winner means so much to me. It feels like my voice is being given a spotlight, and that’s so important for young writers.”
– Rishi Janakiraman, top 15 Foyle Young Poet, 2023

We are so excited that our two judges for this year’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award are the fantastic Vanessa Kisuule and Jack Underwood. They cannot wait to read your poems. On Tuesday 12 March, we ran a webinar with the judges and a former winner where we introduced young poets to the award and heard the judges’ thoughts about writing poetry. If you missed the event but would like a link to the recording, please email [email protected]

The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is an opportunity for any young person aged 11-17 to accelerate their writing career. Since it was founded in 1998, the Award has kick-started the career of some of today’s most exciting new voices, such as Sarah Howe, Jay Bernard, Helen Mort, Richard Osmond, Caroline Bird, Phoebe Stuckes and many more poets from across the world. With entries from over 6,800 young people last year from across the UK and worldwide, it is the largest competition of its kind and its importance is widely attested.

Each year, 100 winners (15 top winners and 85 commended winners) are chosen by two high profile poets, and receive their awards at an annual prize-giving event in the autumn. Thanks to funding from the Foyle Foundation, the competition remains completely free to enter. Winners receive amazing prizes including membership of The Poetry Society, a stack of poetry goodies, and opportunities to receive mentoring and develop their creative writing skills alongside fellow poets, or benefit from poetry residencies at their school or online writing workshops.

You can read last year’s top 15 winning poems in our anthology The Roots Belong to You, which were selected last year by poets Jane Yeh and Jonathan Edwards. A sister anthology, collecting the commended poems in 2023, will be freely available to read online soon.

Winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award are among the most promising young literary talent in the UK; many former winners have gone on to publish work with major publishing houses such as Faber & Faber, Carcanet and Chatto & Windus and won prestigious competitions including the Ted Hughes Award, Forward Prizes and the T.S. Eliot Prize. We support them to establish themselves in the literary and publishing world through a number of initiatives, such editorial opportunities and showcasing events.