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The Poetry Society (U.K.) announces the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019 winners, best poets from around the world

Sixth Chancellor of the University of Salford Installation of Chancellor Professor Jackie Kay MBE – University of Salford, Peel Hall Sixth Chancellor of the University of Salford, April 29, 2015 / photo courtesy of University of Salford Press Office under CC BY 2.0

“If poetry is the language of being human, here we have poets speaking in every cadence possible. We were happy to get a sense of how many poets come from all different corners of the world – for there are no borders or boundaries to cross in the world of poetry and no one need carry a passport to get in.” Jackie Kay and Raymond Antrobus, Judges, Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019

This week the Poetry Society (U.K.) announced the top fifteen winners and eighty-five commended poets in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2019 at an awards ceremony at The Southbank Centre, London.

Run by The Poetry Society and generously supported by The Foyle Foundation, the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award celebrates its twenty-first anniversary this year. Since 1998, the Award has been finding, celebrating and supporting the very best young poets from around the world. The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is firmly established as the leading competition for young poets aged between 11 and 17 years old.

This year the competition drew over 11,000 poems from over 6,000 young poets. Young writers from 76 countries entered the competition, from as far afield as Vietnam, Romania, Mexico and Japan, and every corner of the UK. From these poems this year’s judges Jackie Kay and Raymond Antrobus selected 100 winners, made up of fifteen top poets and eighty-five commended poets.

“This year over 6,000 poets entered the competition, proving to us how many people are turning to poetry to express themselves in these times. There were poems that experimented with style, using the language of social media and of text. Serious and surreal poems sit side by side in this wide-ranging collection. Witty poems and sad poems shake hands with each other. We were delighted to get such a strong sense of poetry being a living, breathing relevant form that keeps changing across generations.”

Winners of the award receive a range of prizes to help develop their writing. The top fifteen poets are invited to attend a residential writing course at the Arvon residential centre The Hurst in Shropshire in Spring 2020. There they spend a week with experienced tutors focusing on improving their poetry and establishing a community of writers. All one-hundred winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award receive a year’s youth membership of The Poetry Society and a goody bag stuffed full of books donated by  generous sponsors. The Poetry Society continues to support winners throughout their careers providing publication, performance and development opportunities, and access to a paid internship programme.

The top fifteen poems are going to be published in a printed winners’ anthology (also available online) from March 2020. The eighty-five commended poems will appear in an online anthology.

Both anthologies showcase the talent of the winners and are distributed free to thousands of schools, libraries, reading groups and poetry lovers across the UK and the world.

Judith Palmer, Director, The Poetry Society, said of this year’s competition:

“A huge congratulations to all 100 young poets and a massive thank you to our judges. It’s the enthusiasm and dedication of young people and teachers around the world that has made the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award the great success it is today. We hope that the quality of the writing and the support The Poetry Society provides to our young poets will inspire even more young writers to enter the competition in future years.”

The top 15 Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2019 are:

Suzanne Antelme, 18*, Guildford
Dana Collins, 18*, London
Annie Davison, 16, Oxford
Thomas Frost, 18*, Strathy, Scotland
Lauren Hollingsworth-Smith, 17, Rotherham Jean Klurfeld 16, New York

Nadia Lines, 17, Hertfordshire
Cia Mangat, 17, Ealing, London
Em Power, 17, London
Talulah Quinto, 13, Ross-on Wye, Herefordshire Trinity Robinson, 16, Durham

Libby Russell 17, East Sussex
Amy Saunders, 13, London
Lydia Wei, Gaithersburg, 16, Maryland, USA Helen Woods, 18*, Oxford

*18-year-old winners were 17 when they entered.

This post is courtesy of the Poetry Society, Wikipedia and Amazon.

Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights.  Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.

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Recent and Upcoming in Digital Publications Poets Advocate for Peace, Justice, and Sustainability, How 100,000 Poets Are Fostering Peace, Justice, and Sustainability, YOPP! * The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice, August 11, 2019 / This short story is dedicated to all refugees. That would be one in every 113 people. * Five poems, Spirit of Nature, Opa Anthology of Poetry, 2019 * From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems), July 2019 * Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review, July 2019 * Three poems, Our Poetry Archive, September 2019

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

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Creative Activist Ai Weiwei to receive award at Pen America 2018 Litfest Gala

Ai Weiwei (2017) courtesy of Jindřich Nosek (NoJin) under CC BY-SA 4.0 license

“When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That’s dangerous for human development.” Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, China)

PEN American announced this weekend that artist Ai Weiwei (Ai Weiwei’s blog,Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009) will receive the Artistic Expression Award at the organization’s 2018 LitFest Gala in Los Angeles. Ai is renowned for making bold aesthetic statements that expose fault lines, unmask hypocrisies, and unleash empathy on a global scale. This honor comes in the wake of the razing of Ai Weiwei’s Beijing studio, including the destruction of several artworks, purportedly to make way for gentrification.

800px-Artz_Pedegral4
Ai Weiwei – Forever, 2018, Artz Pedregal, Mexico City courtesy of Keizers under CC BY-SA 4.0

“Ai Weiwei’s inventive, iconic, and utterly original lens on contemporary life both within and outside China have bridged the worlds of art and activism, awakening millions to the plight of refugees, government corruption, and human suffering. His dramatic, insistent, and impossible-to-forget films, artworks, and installations have jolted the art world, inspired millions, and stoked fear in the minds of governments alert to the power of creativity to spark social change,” said PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel.

“Ai Weiwei has, for decades, endured the personal price of harassment, intimidation, and constraints on his freedom in his determination to speak out and be a voice for those who cannot. Coming without warning, the demolition of his studio last weekend was a vivid reminder of the arbitrary and unpredictable exercise of power that Ai’s work has consistently exposed and contested. PEN America has been proud to stand with Ai Weiwei in his courageous posture of artistic defiance, and is honored to present him with our Artistic Expression Award this year.”

From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Ai Weiwei uses a wide range of mediums as expressions of new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values.

Recent exhibitions include: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors with the Public Art Fund in New York City; Ai Weiwei on Porcelain at the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul; Maybe, Maybe Not at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; and Ai Weiwei. Libero at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. In the fall of 2018, Ai Weiwei will open three major exhibitions in Los Angeles.

Ai currently resides and works in Berlin. He is the current Einstein Visiting Professor at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the 2012 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. Ai’s first feature-length documentary, Human Flow, premiered at the 74th Venice Film Festival in competition.

***

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. 

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Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

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May 22 Literary Gala to Honor Stephen King and Celebrate Free Speech and the Power of Words to Bridge Divides

I thoroughly enjoyed  Stephen King on Writing, A Memoir of the Craft. Entertaining. Practical. Down to earth. Recommended.

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.” Stephen King

PEN America will honor legendary suspense writer Stephen King with the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award at its annual Literary Gala on May 22 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. PEN America confers the Literary Service Award each year to a critically-acclaimed writer whose body of work helps us understand and interpret the human condition, engendering empathy and imagination in even the darkest hours.

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide best-sellers and many—including such classics as It, The Stand, The Dark Tower, Misery, Lisey’s Story, 11/22/63, On Writing, Under the Dome, and many more—providing the basis for major motion pictures and serving as cultural hallmarks for generations.

Among King’s many accolades are the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the 2014 National Medal of Arts presented by Barack Obama. His depictions of horror and violence have also earned him a title as one of the most banned or challenged authors in recent decades.

King is an impassioned advocate of freedom of expression, literacy, and access to information, which he and his wife Tabitha support through their philanthropy.

King’s Haven Foundation provides unique and generous support to writers and other freelancers in the arts who have suffered personal hardship.

Stephen King’s outspoken defense against encroachments on free speech and pointed public criticism of policies that infringe on this and other rights have resulted in his being blocked by President Trump on Twitter.

Can be pre-ordered HERE.

Scribner will release King’s newest novel, The Outsider, on May 22, the day of the PEN America award presentation.

“No stranger to the dark side, Stephen King has inspired us to stand up to sinister forces through his rich prose, his generous philanthropy, and his outspoken defense of free expression,” said author Andrew Solomon, president of PEN America. “Stephen has fearlessly used his bully pulpit as one of our country’s best-loved writers to speak out about the mounting threats to free expression and democracy that are endemic to our times. His vivid storytelling reaches across boundaries to captivate multitudes of readers, young and old, in this country and worldwide, across the political spectrum. He helps us all to confront our demons—whether a dancing clown or a tweeting president.”

If you are reading this post from an email subscription, you’ll have to link through to the The Poet by Day site to view it: Creative Writing Lessons: Creative Writing Tips from Stephen King.

https://youtu.be/CxgiV-NtQvQ

Courtesy of Stephen King, photo credit Shane Leonard

STEPHEN KING (b. 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies.  King has published over fifty novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and six non-fiction books. He has written around 200 short stories, most of which are in book collections. Mr. King’s Amazon page is HERE.

His novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption was the basis for the film The Shawshank Redemption widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. It was in fact voted the greatest film of all time by Empire magazine readers in “The 201 Greatest Movies of All Time” poll in March, 2006. 

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. PEN America’s mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY