Congratulations to the winners of this year’s Young People’s Poetry Competition, seen above with Daisy Goodwin who presented the prizes; the competition judges; and the director of the Chiswick Book Festival Torin Douglas.
See the 2023 prizewinners and pictures of each year group. The winning poems are now on display in Waterstones Chiswick, on the staircase. You can read an excellent article about the prizegiving on ChiswickW4.com here.
Thanks to this year’s partners and supporters: ChiswickW4.com; Bookcase London, which donated most of the book prizes; James Thelusson, who donated copies of School’s Out, which were presented to the first prize winners, along with copies of Daisy Goodwin’s Essential Poems for Children.
Congratulations are also due to 9-year-old Miranda Sofia, who was named as the Girls Schools Association’s ‘Young Woman of the Week’ (below) after reciting a poem at the Prizegiving from her book Poems and Stories for Little People. The book was published in June this year: see Chiswick Nine-year-old Publishes Her First Book ChiswickW4.com.
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2023 marked the 13th year of the Chiswick Book Festival’s Young People’s Poetry Competition, which aims to encourage young people to enjoy creating their own poems. We look for original poems on any theme, up to 25 lines long. It is free and open to children (UK only) in Year 3 to Year 7. The aim is to celebrate children’s creativity in poetic form. There are five year-group categories, with prizes awarded in each section.
Read the letter sent to schools on World Book Day by our Chair of Judges, James Priestman
If you enjoyed that video, click here to watch Jeremy reciting The Second Coming by WB Yeats, who grew up as a schoolboy in Bedford Park, Chiswick – and in 1923 won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Jeremy was unveiling the WB Yeats Smartphone Trail outside St Michael & All Angels Church.
In 2022 the prizes were presented by David Wood, described by The Times as the ‘nation’s children’s dramatist’. He followed in the footsteps of Clare Balding (2021), Vicky Ireland (2020), Roger McGough (2019) and Cressida Cowell.
See the 2022 prizewinners here.
See pictures of the 2022 winners in each year group here.