Poetry Competition 2025

The new Belhaven Poetry Competition celebrated its second birthday in the Walled Garden just prior to the long May Bank Holiday weekend. Every child composes, hand writes, illustrates and then declaims their entry, so that there are three elements to the competition: a written prize, an illustration prize and a declamation prize for both Junior (Forms 5, 4 and 3) and Senior (Forms 2 and 1) sections of the Prep School. 

We were very lucky to have been able to count on the judgement of James Walsh, a children’s TV writer who has had success with ‘Hey Duggee!’ (one of my personal favourites). James came to the Walled Garden at 10.30am and spent half an hour reading the poems that had been selected for the final. These had been mounted on cardboard and hung from the boughs of the apple trees.  

Prior to the declamations, Mr. Walsh decided on the Junior and Senior written poetry prizes. The illustration awards had been adjudicated by Miss Wimbledon and Mrs. Haddon, with the Junior prize going to Sophia D and the Senior to Augustine Le Foll. At the start of the final stage of the competition, it was announced that Rose C was the winner of the Junior Written Poem award, with Fergus B scooping the prize for the Seniors.  

We were then treated to a wonderful 45 minutes of homegrown poetry. The theme for this year was ‘Journey’, with Forms 1 and 2 able to interpret this as they wished and the juniors given a little more guidance: Form 5s journeys were through or under water, Form 4s across land and Form 3 took to the air. Interestingly, many of the children adopted the theme of damage to the natural world at the hands of human beings.

 

The poems came alive in their authors’ voices – it was wonderful to hear the pride and understanding of these budding poets as they brought their creations to life. Mr. Walsh had some very difficult decisions to make because the confidence levels of the performers were also incredibly impressive, with every performance convincingly assured.  

In the end, the Junior Prize went to Meme L, for her poem about a leaf questioning its purpose as it fell from its branch, and the Senior to Jack G, whose journey of an asteroid through space was littered with similes related to life as a Belhaven boarder. Mr. Walsh decided that the poems that best elicited a connection with and reaction from the audience should be the winners. Thank you to him for his time, fantastic feedback to each and every finalist and adjudication, and well done to the English department for inspiring every Belhavian to write their own poem for this year’s competition.