Dear Story Room Friends, I would encourage all of your children to enter this very worthwhile poetry competition… Easy to enter – just send them the poem in an email.
The competition’s website is www.poetryforgood.org.uk
A new national poetry competition is launching on Thursday 4th February to celebrate the UK’s Key Workers – a collaboration between three poets and a cleaning company.
Poetry for Good is a new national poetry competition to highlight and celebrate the UK’s many key workers and the hard work they do – from office cleaners and couriers to shop workers and nurses.
The competition has been organised by Clean for Good, a social-purpose office cleaning business, as part of its wider mission to promote fair pay and dignity at work for cleaners. The competition is being judged by three established poets – Rachel Long, Cecilia Knapp and Katherine Lockton – who have each also written a new poem to promote the competition.
Key Highlights:
- The competition is new and an unusual collaboration between three poets and a cleaning company, Clean for Good;
- Cecilia Knapp is the new Young People’s Laureate for London 2020-21
- Rachel Long is the founder of Octavia, the Poetry Collective for Women of Colour
- Katherine Lockton is the Editor of South Bank Poetry
- The three poets form the all-women Judging Panel for the competition and each has been commissioned to produce a new poem about the UK’s key workers, published for the first time on Thursday 4th February on the competition website – poetryforgood.org.uk
- The competition is free to enter, to make it accessible for all, and is open for submissions until Friday 26th March.
- Clean for Good is funding a number of cash prizes for winners and runners up in each of the three Categories:
- Written Word – written poems from those aged 16 or over
- Spoken Word – spoken poetry from those aged 16 or over
- Growing Word –written poems for those aged 11-15
- Clean for Good is an ethical office cleaning business for London, founded by a group of churches and charities in 2017 to demonstrate that a professional cleaning business can also provide fairly paid and dignified jobs. Its cleaning team of nearly 50 cleaners are hugely diverse, with origins from around the world.
In the last year we have seen the crucial role that key workers play in keeping our nation safe, well, and on the move – “you who holds the whole sky up” in the words of Cecilia’s new poem. Whether it is teachers or nurses, cleaners or couriers, carers or shopworkers – millions of people, often on low pay, keep our nation going. But they serve our nation like this every year and often for little recognition. The aim of this competition is to make a contribution to raising the profile of their work and recognising their value.
Cecilia Knapp, one of the competition’s poets on the Judging Panel said: ‘It was an honour to be asked to write a poem in celebration of our key workers and shine a light on the invaluable work they do to keep this country going. I believe poetry to be a tool for celebration, for empathy and connection and so a poem of thanks and recognition felt like the perfect way to elevate the vital role that key workers play. I’m all about bringing poetry into unexpected settings and bringing poetry into the mainstream a bit more, to show that poetry can and should be for everyone, so partnering with a cleaning company to write this piece and to judge their competition, although unusual, is exactly what I’m about.’
Tim Thorlby, Managing Director of Clean for Good, said: ‘The last year has been tough for many – including our team of cleaners in London. We’re embarking upon this unusual collaboration because we wanted to highlight and celebrate the work of the millions of key workers in this country. Poetry has a way of cutting through to people in new ways. We hope that the competition will open the hearts and minds of more people to the crucial role that our key workers play and the pressing need to give them the fair pay and respect they deserve.”
The competition’s website is www.poetryforgood.org.uk and is on Twitter @PoetryforGoodUK
Judging panel:
Cecilia Knapp is the current Young People’s Laureate for London 2020-21, appointed in October 2020, a post set up by the charity Spread the Word. She is a poet, playwright and novelist. She’s a former resident artist at The Roundhouse and a Ted X speaker. Commissions include The Tate, The BBC and The Guardian and she has written for The Huffington Post, The Independent, and The Stage. She has written for Vogue and been featured as one of the UK’s young writers to watch. She was shortlisted for the 2020 Outspoken poetry prize and the 2020 Rebecca Swift Foundation Women’s Prize. She was resident poet at Great Ormond Street Hospital for two years and is lead tutor for the Roundhouse’s prestigious poetry collective. She is an ambassador for the mental health charity CALM.
Katherine Lockton is a Latinx poet living in London. She is co-editor of South Bank Poetry. Her work has most recently appeared in The Latino Book Review, Magma, Poem magazine, The Spectator, PN Review and the Latinx anthology Un Nuevo Sol. She co-edited (with Carlo Pirozzi) an anthology of new Scottish war poems called Like Leaves in Autumn published by Luath Press. She enjoys running her monthly poetry workshops at South Bank Poetry. Katherine was awarded the Inaugural International Travel Bursary by The Saltire Society and British Council Scotland. Her collection of poetry ‘Paper Doll’ was published in September 2020. Her writing is heavily influenced by being bilingual and having a dual heritage and the customs, culture, history, people, and politics of Bolivia.
Rachel Long is a poet and founder of the Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour, which is housed at the Southbank Centre, in London. Rachel’s poetry and prose have been published widely, most recently in Filigree, Mal and The White Review. Since 2015 she has been Assistant Tutor to Jacob Sam-La Rose on The Barbican Young Poets programme. Rachel’s debut poetry collection, My Darling from the Lions was published by Picador in August 2020. It was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and The Costa Book Award, 2020.
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