The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2024 is open! Enter your poems by 31 July 2024 at foyleyoungpoets.org

The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is one of the biggest and most prestigious poetry competitions for 11-17 year olds in the world. Every year, 15 top winners and 85 commended poets are chosen; together, they represent some of the most exciting new voices writing today. This year’s judges are the fantastic Vanessa Kisuule and Jack Underwood, and they can’t wait to read your poems! If you’re aged 11-17, send in your poems for the chance to be among the 100 winners and kick-start your writing career.

Poems can be on any theme and in any style but must be no longer than forty lines. You can submit as many as you like.

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]

Winners of the award receive a fantastic range of prizes to help develop their writing. The top 15 poets receive a mentoring package with opportunities to receive support and feedback on their writing; 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.

Since it began 26 years ago, the Award has kick-started the career of some of today’s most exciting voices. Past winners include Jay Bernard, Sarah Howe, Helen Mort, Phoebe Power, Caroline Bird, Mukahang Limbu, Richard O’Brien and many more incredible poets. You can read last year’s winning poems for inspiration in our new anthology, The Roots Belong to You (and anthologies from many previous years are available here), and scroll down to read the accompanying anthology of commended poems.

Top 15 Winners’ Anthology

Commended Poets’ Anthology

 

If you’d like to stay up-to-date with everything that The Poetry Society offers young writers, follow our social media pages (X/ Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook) for updates. You can also visit Young Poets Network for year-round poetry prompts and challenges, events and advice for young writers.

If you have any queries, or if you would like any information about the competition in an alternative format, please contact us at [email protected].

Teachers

Teachers, librarians and youth workers are encouraged to enter class sets of students’ poems using our teacher submission portal. For inspiration, teachers can order a free class set of print anthologies featuring the 2023 winning poems by emailing [email protected]. We are also happy to send you posters about the Award for your classroom, or you can download the poster here.

Sign up to our monthly teachers’ ebulletin for up-to-date news about free poetry resources and opportunities your school can take part in. Join Cloud Chamber, our online poet-teacher network, for access to free CPD and opportunities to share best practice with other educators dedicated to celebrating poetry.