Prizes were awarded on 13 September by the poet Joshua Seigal and Chiswick Book Festival Director Torin Douglas who are pictured with the winners and the judges.
Read a full report of the prizegiving and the list of winners on ChiswickW4.com.
The prizes were generously donated by Bookcase London in Chiswick High Road.
CHAIR OF JUDGES’ REPORT & POEM FOR PRIZEGIVING 2024 – by James Pendle, addressing the winning young poets.
We received 160 entries from 19 schools. Each of those poems was read by one of the judges, Carol Douglas and Susan Stanley-Carroll, who are both former school teachers; Nicky Kelly, who also taught and has an MA in screenwriting; and myself, the poet James Pendle. Thirty-two poems were selected as winning or commended poems. All the judges read all those poems, in order to decide who should come first, second, third or be commended.
Your poems were selected for two reasons: they showed some poetic technique and they said something enthralling.
To celebrate your work, I have written a poem composed of at least one line from each of your poems, with numbered annotations below.
Hope
Where does Hope hide?[1]
Behind crimson curtains from a textured ceiling?[2]
In a sky full of stars in the humid bright night?[3]
In a garden full of greenery,[4] strawberries, blackberries?[5]
Is it there when a bird from above swoops low[6]
over cerulean sea[7] in the sun’s warm glow?[8]
To a mother, Hope’s in the crying of her newborn child;
to a leopard, it’s in the places we call wild;
to a worker, in the crackling of the fireplace;
to a gambler, in the place they score an ace:[9]
needles dig into his skin,[10]
veins sharpen on his neck,[11]
memory hunting him down,[12]
sucking in, never letting him out.[13]
There were bullies,[14]
the memories hurt more than life itself,[15]
tearing every second of silence
to shreds.[16]
Limp, timid and tarnished,[17]
eating a bagel,[18] curled like an armadillo,[19]
the gambler’s been adrift for two months;[20]
friends washed away like seashells on a bay;[21]
no love no fear but pure red anger.[22]
Two children stop to see the sight.[23]
Little girl flinches[24], then opens a wise mouth.[25]
How lucky they were that their parents loved them!
How lucky they were that friends were there for them![26]
Boy is armed[27]
with a flannel, bar of soap and a comb.[28]
The gambler says,
“I’m sorry for mistakes I’ve made.”[29]
In the darkness light sways.[30]
So, when someone’s in the dark,
a broken heart;
sad, so bad, stressed and rushed,
share Hope and share Love,[31]
it will lift someone up.[32]
And even if we argue, even if we fight,
even if we shout and scream
and cry and hit and bite,[33]
Hope is a thing that makes us achieve,
it’s the spark in our heart it’s the drum beat.[34]
And have Faith[35]: you write your own story.[36]
The river loves to be itself[37]
whatever the valley
or canyon,[38] so,
Five, four, three, two, one,
Action.[39]
[1] Where does hope hide? Maria Boyle
[2] Making the theatre, Eva Kapadia Tully
[3] The Loving Moon, Scarlett Paiser
[4] Rose, Ella Aghite
[5] I wish I can be a fairy, Leah Shrestha Zverina
[6] The life of mine, Jada Okwuosa
[7] Your Paradise, Alice Garner
[8] Life, Sehej Singh
[9] A different home, Emma Chen
[10] The Sandstorm, Francesca Warne
[11] The hopeless homeless man, Alexander Barclay
[12] The language I speak, Delvin Baiju
[13] A glowing portal, Olivia Silvey
[14] Hope 2, Florence Tovell
[15] The Memories, Nurdan Atakan
[16] Hope, Elvis Terakopian Watts
[17] The heart of the flame, Emma Ciarfaglia
[18] Eagle and Seagull. Blue Roberts
[19] Home, Parteek Singh Sangha
[20] Leaving home, Xander Ong
[21] The Final Year, Aditya Sahgal-Tully
[22] The heart of the flame, Emma Ciarfaglia
[23] The galaxy of my neighbourhood, Lucia Edison
[24] Where does hope hide? Maria Boyle
[25] Returning home, Tom Canning
[26] Someone, Sophia Akbar-Plowright
[27] James Pendle
[28] The Bathtime Rhyme, Felix Levesques
[29] Bigger than a mountain, Charlotte Karolina Fitzsimmons
[30] Light, Luna Tong
[31] James Pendle
[32] I am your hope, Alice Prentis
[33] What home means to me, Molly Young
[34] What is hope? Gigi Epstein
[35] James Pendle
[36] Your choice, Zahra Sayed Zadah
[37] The River, Lola Penton
[38] James Pendle
[39] Making the theatre, Eva Kapadia