Foyle Young Poets

{Merlin the horse at the Arvon Centre}

Winning the Foyle Young Poets of the Year award for 2011 was probably one of the biggest achievements of my life so far. The honour was much more about the people that I met as a result than about recognition or success, though. Leaving aside the sheer brilliance of Luke Kennard and Jane Draycott as teachers to us and poets in their own right, the other winners who came along for the Arvon Foundation course were the kind of amazing people that make you constantly doubt yourself while internally promising to write better and better and better poems. (I mean that in a good way, obviously.) Also, we danced the Macarena together. And, also, you have never seen fridge-magnent-poetry like Arvon Centre poetry.

{a fridge poem - collectively authored}

Read my winning poem (and also, everyone else's) here.