Schools

06 Oct 09

The Christopher Tower Poetry Competition, run by Christ Church, has a £3,000 top prize.

Next year’s Christopher Tower Poetry Competition, run by Christ Church, looks set to be bigger and better than ever, with a £3,000 top prize and a year on year increase in the number of entrants.

With National Poetry Day on Thursday (October 8), poetry is increasingly in the public eye and with today’s launch of 2010’s competition, its organisers are hoping for another year of high calibre entries.

The competition, which is open to all sixth form students in the UK, was first launched in 2000. In 2008/9 alone the number of competition entries received was double that of the previous year. This year’s prizes will range from £250 to the top prize of £3,000.

‘We are really excited by the increase in interest in the Tower Poetry Competition,’ said Dr Peter McDonald, Christopher Tower Student and Tutor in Poetry in English at Christ Church. ‘Our purpose is to ignite in teenagers the desire to experience poetry as a poet – something that can greatly enhance the young person’s grasp of the form. 

‘The rise in interest we are seeing means that young students are being encouraged to write poetry themselves, and this encourages them to consider poetry as an integral part of their lives – something to be experienced for its own value, as well as to be experienced as part of their formal education.’

Each year entrants have to write a single poem on a nominated theme. For the 2010 competition, the theme is ‘Promises’. The judges will be poet Stephen Romer, editor of PN Review and Professor of Poetry in the Department of English, University of Glasgow, Michael Schmidt, and Peter McDonald. 

Many of the competition’s past winners have gone on to achieve further acclaim for their writing in other competitions or in the publishing world, including Helen Mort who won the Young Poet prize in the Manchester Poetry Competition in 2008 and Annie Katchinska, one of 8 new poets in The Faber New Poets programme.

Students can enter the competition themselves, or via their school. The schools attended by the prizewinners also receive cash prizes.