Live Canon are fundraising for our annual Children’s Poetry Competition!
This is one of the most important events in our calendar and each year we doggedly raise the funds to make it happen.
Our competition for children and young people is free to enter for all children - they can enter individually or via their school. It gives 100 young poets a chance to be published in our Children’s Anthology, and see their work in print. There's a prize for the winner in each age category, as well as a prize for the school that has sent the best set of entries so that we can celebrate excellent teachers as well.
This is an opportunity for the poets of the future to develop their craft and build their confidence, as well as an opportunity for young people to get serious about creative work in an educational landscape where creative writing is more an more squeezed in the curriculum.
But we need to fundraise to make it happen. The competition has to be free in order that any child in any part of the country can take part. The costs involved include publishing the anthology (and giving free copies to all the children with work in it), a lot of postage (to get the books to them), prizes for the winners, and some admin support. So we need your help. Please help us to provide this much needed opportunity to our young people; we will be extremely grateful for a donation of any size. And please spread the word and encourage others to donate if you can.
For a taste of the sheer brilliance of the work we receive, below is a poem by Oscar Otomo Humphries - highly commended in the year 4 to year 6 category (that's aged 8-11).
Fox
In a blanket of snow
An arctic fox
In the fox’s eye
A petrified fish
Through the fish’s gills
A wide ocean
Past the wide ocean
A frosty wasteland
In the frosty wasteland
An arctic fox
