Huge congratulations to Frank Qi (Upper Sixth) who is one of the top 15 winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.
This year saw an astounding 6,600 young poets aged 11-17 from 119 countries enter 15,800 poems to the competition. Entries were received from every postcode area in England, and from throughout Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Poetry Society announced the top 15 winners and 85 commended poets in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2023 at a special celebration at Shakespeare’s Globe, London. Frank attended the special celebration ceremony where he was able to read his winning poem ‘Hometown Eulogy’.
All the winners will receive further mentoring opportunities and are invited to attend a residential writing course at the Arvon centre to focus on improving their poetry and establishing a community of writers. The top 15 poems will also be published in a printed winners’ anthology (also available online) from March 2024.
Well done to Frank on this fantastic achievement. Read Frank’s poem below.
Hometown Eulogy
i ask my father where home is
and he tells me it is
Jinan, the city of springs.
here, April sheen
frames the waterlily bulbs like
a gold filament painting.
the sky stays
persimmon-coloured
after midnight.
south of the river, i grow up
wrapped in a red flag. the fabric
stiffens my tongue and
teaches me to speak
in idioms. when he asks me
in return, i tell him
that i remember home
falling like rain on a
bruised London afternoon. in the
back of a Wetherspoons, my sister
tells me home is shaped like
a plastic bag. she tells me home
is minding the gaps,
home is the Bakerloo line, northbound,
with two stops to go. home
is how my lips yield
when i grieve that
i will never
belong. i ask my mother
where home is
and she tells me it is
the ache sewn
into the strokes
of my name. and if
i pick out the stitching with
my fingernails and find
again where i began,
home is somewhere
between the seats of this empty plane.
