Every year the Poetry Society (https://poetrysociety.org.uk/), a huge UK organisation dedicated to showcasing excellent poetry, runs a competition for young poets – The Foyle Young Poets Award. I thought it might be inspiring to highlight how seriously this organisation takes the work of young writers, because it’s easy to think, as a young person, that nobody cares what you do or believe. The Friday School Strikes about climate change (https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/) have started to show people that we ignore the voices of the next generation at our peril, and as young writers, you represent those voices too.
Check out https://poetrysociety.org.uk/competitions/foyle-young-poets-of-the-year-award/ to read the work of this year’s winning poets, to leaf through a virtual book of winning entries, and to find out about all the other ways the Poetry Society supports young poets. And don’t forget that your work has value, and you can demand to be heard!
Keep writing, and please keep sending me your poems to editor@rhymerag.net.