Megan Young Poetry Prize 2024
A poem about the sun by the winner of the Megan Young Poetry Prize 2024
Read more ...Tag Archives: poetry
Megan Young Poetry Prize 2020
Poetry Becomes a Covid Casualty It seems that poetry has become a casualty of Covid 19. Schools are being advised they can drop poetry from the GCSE syllabus, at least for the next 12 months. What a shame! Children are natural poets. They are uninhibited. They express their thoughts and feelings as they find them. They love rhythm and are fascinated by word play. They don’t just read poetry – they write it. I know this as the mother of a child who wrote poetry from the moment she could write. I know it also because in recent years I … Read more …
In Poetry Every Word Counts
Misprints in poetry I was reading an article in the magazine of the Society of Authors the other day about the extra care that is needed to avoid misprints in poetry. ‘In poetry, every word counts,’ wrote the poet John Greening. Misprints can be brought about by the need to transcribe a poet’s hand writing or, these days, by an over enthusiastic spellchecker. John Greening’s article struck a chord with me. When my daughter died at the age of 32 I took on the task of transcribing her poetry, mostly handwritten, contained in a scruffy old folder. Subsequently I published … Read more …
Megan Young Poetry Prize
A poem about a blue tit by Daisy Godbold, a Year 7 pupil at the Stephen Perse Foundation school in Cambridge, has won the 2018 Megan Young Poetry Prize
Read more ...Should we stop talking about the battle with cancer?
When my daughter Megan was dying of terminal cancer, she was adamant that at her funeral no-one should talk about her brave fight or use phrases such as ‘she died after a long battle with cancer’. This is not a battle, she told me. I am dying. A cancer charity says that the perceived idea that people need to fight cancer can have a negative effect.
Read more ...Poetry and Science
At first glance it seems to me that poetry and science make strange bedfellows. The latter demands accuracy and clarity, the former is open to the interpretation of the reader, revealing more than the mere words suggest.
Read more ...Coventry – a good choice for our troubled times
Some people seem to be scratching their heads, asking themselves why Coventry has been chosen as UK City of Culture 2021. British people that is. What doesn’t seem to be realised is that Coventry is an international city, its name resonating with people around the world. Its message of peace and reconciliation is heard by thousands in other countries and has done so since the building of the inspirational new cathedral consecrated in 1962.
Read more ...Megan Young Poetry Prize Winner Announced
A poem about green tomatoes has won the Megan Young Poetry Prize. The winner, Ayshe-Mira Yashin, aged 14, is a pupil at the Stephen Perse Foundation school in Cambridge. The award was launched in 2014, in memory of my daughter, Megan Young, who was a pupil at the school and who died aged 32, four months after being diagnosed with cancer. Megan was an equine veterinary surgeon, but she was also a poet having expressed herself through her poetry throughout her life. Some of her poetry has been published in Wordsmith: The Gift of a Soul …
Read more ...Sharing Grief Through Poetry
I will never forget the lady behind the Post Office counter. Meeting her was such a reminder of how little we know about the people we meet in the course of our day to day lives, of the things we carry with us, the depths of our feelings, our hidden talents, the grief that many of us share but which we rarely talk about. Sharing grief can happen in unlikely places. …
Read more ...A Political Anthem
The 1945 bombing raid on Dresden and the poem that Megan Young wrote about it has attracted more interest than any other post. She wrote the powerful poem, Annihila, on the 50th anniversary of the raid. When you read it, you can feel the intensity of Megan’s ability to relate to the suffering of others and transform that into the written word. This is the voice of a young woman who cared deeply about justice and who felt the pain of the world. …
Read more ...