Each year Canterbury Festival runs a poetry competition open to Kent-based young people aged 5-18. The theme for 2020 was Earth Tribe, celebrating all forms of life and nature on earth.

This year the Festival received more individual applications than ever before. Online poetry resources were accessed during lockdown and schools and parents worked with children learning from home. The resulting anthology contains fifteen incredible poems written in exceptional circumstances to conjure the importance of our Earth Tribe. Copies of this year’s Anthology can be purchased here.

The winners will be announced on National Poetry Day, Thursday 1 October on BBC Radio Kent’s Dominic King Show from 6pm. Until then you can listen to all of this year’s shortlisted poems on our YoutTube page.

Congratulations to our shortlisted poets!

Ages 5 – 10

• Alexander Robertson, Age 6
• Seth Player, Age 8
• Kayleigh Williams, Age 9
• Scarlet Rhodes, Age 10
• Teo Joseph, Age 10

Ages 11 – 13

• Arthur Watson, Age 11
• Humnah Khuram, Age 11
• Hugo Fassum, Aged 11
• Sophie Arterton, Age 12
• Theodora Wang, Age 12

Ages 14 – 18

• Isla Allen, Age 14
• Anna Hagan, Age 14
• Oliver Maciejewski, Age 15
• Olivia Simmonds-Roberts, Age 14
• Lizzy Hornsby, Age 17

Thank you to all those that have taken part, to school office staff, teachers and parents. Thank you also to Dominic King at BBC Radio Kent, Lucy at Lucy in the Sky Productions, Dr Alan Payne and Steph Avery-Renolds at Sailor Made Arts.