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Foyle 2001

Our Model Answer

“Every Singaporean Matters” –government slogan   The woman at the mouth of the MRT station is hard not to notice. We want to hold her hand, drift towards her siren-voice wailing in Hokkien. Her with the withered white hair, with crumpled face and clothes. But we turn away, too embarrassed to buy her garish kiddie […]

Minimum Wage

I have never worked   on grass so sharp that it cuts into my feet like glass.   under a sun so hot that the soles of my trainers melted welding me to the ground hanging in a sky so empty so spotlessly bare that I can see solar systems   wood pigeons are still, […]

Weed Wants To Travel

for Bill and Ben   On a normal day, you’d see my stalk quiver towards the moss-free flowerpots which I live behind. But underneath, there’s the legful haze of my crazy roots encountering worms. The furious tingle, of spread-eagling round bricks and buried stones oval and sea-formed in perfection – my treasure. My ambition? To […]

The Sirens

Spring 2001   Was it just sea cows peacefully suckling?   When scurvy set in they carried on, until even the captain lay below, his gums red and swollen in his dry face.   And then the wind died. Long, long days of the sail sagging. Thin and weak they sprawled on the deck dreaming […]

Wanderings

And next door At number 30, A pig-tailed six year old, Freckled and “angelic” Thinks of dolls houses, Chocolate, And a world take over bid……   The moon, Hangs in the sky, As you walk, Through the sheeting drizzle, Glinting in the light Cast from pink streetlights, Suspended down the nameless street   They live, […]

Leah Remembers Stars and Mandrakes

“Go and catch a falling star; Get with child a mandrake root” –Song (Go and catch a falling star), John Donne   He spends his days working in the fields, sweating in the wheat’s pale gold. When I go to the well or call the children from their play, I see his back dipping and […]

Waiting for Robert

We have lived here for centuries, Ginger and me. Pressed close between the dust-sheets, We wait for my Robert to return.   I pretend to make tea at six. Pretend. Just think about it, In case, by chance, he might Walk in find me unprepared. Ginger chases spiders, he Crushes and crunches Their black ooze […]

Laika

A humming bird treads an invisible thread researching the leafless ground below; a dissertation on silence.   You send balloons up, haemoglobin bubbles in the sky dispersing sudden thoughts like Apollo’s limbs –   maybe you do not want to be alone now, (after that first fatal wish) wait for the card to be returned; […]

Tom Bennet’s Gold Watch

He’s sitting in his comfy chair, Shouting orders at unsuspecting young cargo workers   He hides me in the double bunk, Behind the freezer, With the cans of tinned beans,   Me, 7 years old, Listening to his great “Boogie-Woogie” CD, At 6 in the morning,   His old Teddy Duck, Sitting faithfully on his […]

Look at the Clouds

I need to change the sheets on my bed. They are thicker, less soft, than they were. I need to brush my hair and go for a walk, and I need to put the plastic bag in the bin to a recycling place, and I need to put ample milk on my breakfast, staring at […]

Pulau Ubin

it cannot be denied that the fields and forests have their minds – after all, morning dew does mix with earth, and they are fields of rain.   and the hens and cockerels, they have to defecate somewhere.   it is also true that such simple happiness here is often found in thatched houses (that […]

By Patrick Darren Connely

Today’s homework: write your life story. Well I was born in Langdon, Essex. July 13th, almost fourteen years ago. My name is Patrick, although, my Dad preferred Darren. That’s about it. The detention room is like a greenhouse. No windows open, just glass letting the June afternoon heat toast us.

Caleb Yong

Caleb Yong is a winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2001.

Luke Samuel Yates

Luke’s pamphlet The Pair of Scissors That Could Cut Anything was published by The Rialto in 2013. He has been published in The North, THE SHOp, Smiths Knoll and The Rialto among others, and on the London Underground. In 2015 he was named a winner of the Poetry Business Pamphlet prize, with The Flemish Primitives. […]

Ruth Yates

Ruth Yates is a winner of Simon Elvin Young Poets of 1998 and Foyle Young Poets of 2001.

Charlotte Wetton

Charlotte is a page and performance poet whose work has featured in The Cadaverine, Staple, The Frogmore Papers and elsewhere. Her audio collection Body Politic was published by Dead Ink in 2012. Charlotte was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2001.

Jen Wainwright

Jen Wainwright is a winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2001.

Qian Xi Teng

Qian Xi’s first collection They hear salt crystallising was published in 2010 by firstfruitspress. It is an intricate dreamscape where Chinese myths and Western inspirations intertwine with the poet’s personal narrative. Qian Xi has had poems published in various books and magazines including W. W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the […]

Helen Mort © Mike Gibbons

Helen Mort

Helen Mort was born in Sheffield. Her first full-length collection, Division Street (Chatto & Windus, 2013) was shortlisted for the Costa Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize and, in 2014, won the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize. Her latest collection is No Map Could Show Them (Chatto & Windus, 2016). Helen is a five times winner of […]

Felicity Marks

Felicity Marks is a winner of the Poetry Society Young Poets of the Year 2000 and 2001.

Pieter Mark Koehorst

Pieter Mark Koehorst is a winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2001.

Caleb Klaces

Caleb Klaces is the author of Fatherhood (Prototype, 2019) and Bottled Air (Eyewear, 2013). His poetry has appeared in Granta, The Manchester Review, Stand and Eyewear Publishing’s Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam. In 2011 he received an Eric Gregory Award. He was a winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2001 and […]

Judith Huang

Judith Huang is a winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2001, 2003 and 2004.

Vicky Hozaifeh

Vicky Hozaifeh is a winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2001.

Rebecca Hawkes

Rebecca Hawkes is a winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2001.

The Wood

It sweeps on for miles, it seems, This creature, of green depth, Green shadow, and green gold, For miles, its bulk, heavy with pines, And lightened only by snatches of pale sun, In clearings, and in the movement of branches, Seems to stretch….   There are places, Near the heart of this creature, Where you […]

Emma Gaen

Emma Gaen was a winner of Foyle Young Poet of the Year 2001.

Queue to leave

A large muffin of a man Leans against a grimy signpost Swathed in a toffee coloured duffel coat Speckled with tears of rain, His coal black hair is slicked behind scarlet ears And a thin snake tongue licks pursed lips. Slitted eyes narrow dangerously as, Glancing at a silver watch Strapped tightly around his podgy […]

Dylan Chaundy

Dylan Chaundy was winner of Foyle Young Poets 2001.

New Life

Who would think that you, a lazy gambler, could hide those sort of secrets in your curled black hair. Dusty roads, trodden by those who would stab your honest son and burn down your farm, forged from blood, sweat and tears. From under the wiry mosquito nets, I remember stumbling out and knocking from you […]

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