Foyle Young Poets Award: Anisha M & Lucy W

Category: News

The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award is an annual competition for young poets from around the world which ran for the 22^nd time this year, receiving nearly 16,000 entries, of which 15 winners and 85 commended poets were selected. To celebrate, instead of running an annual event in London, they held an online zoom call and sent out packages of books and goodies to the chosen poets. An artist has also collated motifs from the one hundred poems, which is on show at the Poetry Café near Covent Gardens. Two AGGS sixth formers (Lucy W and Anisha M) were chosen as commended for the following poems below:

I always put too much honey on my toast

By that I mean that I plunge metal into jar
until it touches the bottom and the grey is
storm cloud through watered window, amber
with the way it would freeze if my breath wasn’t
there to blow it, up to the handle in something
that’s climbing higher, sword in stone. Move
quickly, don’t let it slide off, watch a string of
spun sugar embroider the chopping board,
and do it two, three times until my knife is no
longer touching bread and the pool is gold as
fire in a glass. Then eat. It becomes a game,
can I catch the spots to lick along bite marks
before fly-catching tree sap makes me a pinky
promise. It starts slow, elegant, painted girl at
picnic eating cucumber sandwiches then something
on the other side starts trying to intertwine our
fingers and it is quick, rushed, undignified, eating
in a circle like I am the crowd at the colosseum.
Eventually the time comes when the honey
realises it is larger than life and sliced bread’s
superior; the brown dam breaks and amber liquid
starts to collapse on my hand, the world’s messiest
waterfall that lacks the ability to clean up after
itself, so the whole thing is shoved in my mouth.
It always feels like I should have managed to
eat more in that time but the bread is gone so I
wash my hands because I am always left sticky.

By Lucy W

Lucy said:

“I’d love to say that there is a particularly poignant meaning behind this poem, and I could probably claim one about perfection or expectation but in truth I was imagining standing in front of the chopping board in kitchen, looking out of the backdoor and eating toast in the morning every day. It’s remarkably easy to put just slightly too much honey on so it slides off without intending to. It seemed to happen to me every time, so I had some fun writing a poem about it.”  

Anisha said:

“It’s such a great experience to have been commended by The Poetry Society as a Foyle Young Poet, and I’m so glad to have found out about, and entered it whilst I still could. The goody bags were a lovely addition, with a range of poetry books I’m finding a great read whilst isolating! I’ve always wanted to be a writer and a poet, so being a part of FOYLE came as a wonderful surprise and has inspired me further to carry on writing my blog and entering other competitions.”

Read school’s post about the award here