A 17-year-old from Oxford has seen off competition from more than 6,000 young writers from around the world to win an international poetry prize.
The Poetry Society announced the winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2024 at a special celebration at the British Library in London.
The event honoured the "future stars of the poetry world" with readings from the top 15 writers, including Idris Scrase.
The Oxford teenager, whose poems have appeared in Grain and Triggerfish Critical Review, has been longlisted for the Tower Poetry Competition, and was a runner up for The Classical Association Poetry Competition.
He said: “Winning Foyle has been completely surreal. After ceaseless rejections from countless competitions and journals, I still can’t really fathom that I’ve been lucky enough to win.
"I’m still tingling from the dopamine rush I got when I received that phone call. Both the validation, and more importantly the drive to keep writing, have been insane.”
This year, 17,000 poems from more than 6,600 young poets were entered into the competition.
Young people from 113 countries took part, from as far afield as Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Madagascar, and Sri Lanka, as well as the four corners of the UK.
The judges, writer and performer Vanessa Kisuule and poet Jack Underwood, selected 100 winners, comprising 15 top poets and 85 commended poets.
Mr Underwood said: "Judging the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award this year was a genuinely restorative experience.
"To see so many poems written by young people, while initially daunting, reassured me that poetry is healthier than ever.
"Vanessa and I were moved to laughter, to gasps of surprise, and to silence."
The winners of the award receive a range of prizes to help develop their writing, including further mentoring opportunities.
The top 15 poets are invited to attend a residential writing course at the Arvon centre, The Hurst in Shropshire, in February 2025.
Judith Palmer, director of The Poetry Society, said: "It’s amazing to think that more than 17,000 new poems were written in 2024 by young writers eager to participate in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.
"The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is a launch pad for the best of the world’s young poets, and the award’s sheer scale and global reach demonstrates what a huge achievement it is to be selected as one of our winners."
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