Welcome to The Poetry Zone!

Well done everyone who entered our National Poetry Day competition. The entries were of an exceptionally high standard. Liz Brownlee, with whom I co-wrote The Same Inside, helped me judge the competition. Well done Vedantika Chakraborty, Niamh Hadley, Hamzah Rather, Georgina Williams, Noah Ogle, Eve Blightman Bell, Lily Robinson, H. Firth and Nour Ben Khalifa. You can read all the entries by going to POEMS and scrolling down to Competition Entries.

Since 1998 The Poetry Zone has published around 30,000 poems by young people and has had millions of visitors – children and teenagers, real live poets and other adults – who want to check us out, especially teachers who use the Poetry Zone as a fun way of teaching poetry in their schools.. 

NOTE TO SCHOOLS SENDING POEMS. I’m very happy for schools to send us poems. But I do edit all poems – in the same way that poems would be edited in a book. This does take time – and so I would ask schools to limit the number of poems sent. If a school sends, say, 30 poems – one from every class member – I may have to choose a selection to appear in the Poetry Zone. Schools may, however, send as many poems as they would like for competitions..

Poo Poo Poo! Rude poems can be very funny but be warned – if you send us poems about farts, bottoms or poo they won’t be appearing in the Poetry Zone. So please stop sending us rude poems. 

And do please remember that all the poems you send should be your own original work.