Ella Standage, a student at Alleyn’s School in Dulwich, was awarded the 2017 Christopher Tower Poetry Prize, an annual award for aspiring 16 to 18-year-old poets.
The theme for this year’s competition was “stone”, a subject that attracted more than 1,000 entries. A record number of poems came from schools that had never entered the competition before.
Ella won the £3,000 top prize for a poem called rosetta, the opening lines of which are printed, right.
The £1,000 second prize went to Annie Fan from Rugby High School, who wrote a poem entitled Qianling Stele while Rachel Oyawale, from Woldingham School in Surrey, won the £500 third prize for If I Gave You a Stone.
The three prize-winners, whose schools received £150 each, were presented with their awards at a reception at Christ Church, Oxford last month.
Three other young poets were shortlisted and won £250 each – Freya Gray Stone from Bristol Grammar School, Flora Barber from Malvern St James Girls’ School in Worcestershire, and Sofia Al-Hussaini from The Maynard School in Exeter.
The judges of this year’s competition were the poets Vahni Capildeo, who won the 2016 Forward prize for poetry, and Sarah Howe, the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2015.
Speaking about the entries, Ms Capildeo said she was struck by their quality and originality. “It was heartening to see these writers taking risks and honing the truth of their own styles,” she added.
The competition, now in its 17th year, has a reputation for discovering impressive new poetry talent, with several previous winners going on to develop successful writing careers.
More than 12,000 young poets have entered the award since it was launched in 2001.
To read the winning poems and for details of the competition, go to www.towerpoetry.org.uk
rosetta (the opening lines)
you find me sandblistered.
maybe i am the thumbnail of a giant.
maybe i am a map in braille leading to the vault
where every lost language sleeps, or maybe i am the key.
or a dislocated tongue, & you put me in a mouth that isn’t mine
& let me garble out alien shapes; you put me to your ear & hear god’s fingerprints coming down the phone, hieroglyphs dancing like soundwaves.