2024 Young Poets Results

We would like to congratulate all our winners and thank everyone who entered the Young Poets Competition this year. Congratulations to our young poet Sylvan Restarick with their winning entry Ode To The Dent You Left In The Sofa Cushions.

ode to the dent you left in the sofa cushions

we are lying on the old grey sofa in the living room, melting into cushions,
we sprawl out like dropped ice cubes on hot kitchen tiles and right now
i am thinking how I would quite like to crawl inside you.
you are high on something and I am high off you, shirtless and giggling,
your skin full of holes i will never have enough fingers to plug and right now
i am thinking my skin is your skin but i know you do not want it,
all the love in the world could not make me a girl, could not make me beautiful to you.
you know that the boy beside you is going to tell you something horrifying,
that the words are on the tip of my tongue – so you evaporate in the small hours, float up
through the ceiling, leave an outline in the tired cushions as you go. weeks pass
and i still have not sat on the sofa, i live in fear of breathing so hard i blow away your silhouette,
walk your eggshells, refuse to disturb the ghost of your dreamless sleep.
that night i wanted nothing more than you and i,
how i laid there and ate my own limbs to distract myself –
swallowing down the maddening urge to tell you that i want to touch you,
your hair and your lips and your hands,
chewing off parts until i was bodiless and desolate, no arms to carry the weight of this sorrow.
i must tell myself you are blameless when I throw myself over your dent in the sofa cushions,
must pretend i am Achilles and that this – this person-shaped hole – is the body of Patroclus
as i weep into your absence, telling it
i’m sorry, come back, I love you.

2024 Winners

Our thanks also go to the shortlist team and to Clare Shaw our 2024 Young Poets Judge. Without our judges we wouldn’t be able to run the competitions. The winning entries can be downloaded and enjoyed from the table below.

Position	Title	Author	Download Link (Subject to Availability)
1st	Ode To The Dent You Left In The Sofa Cushions	Sylvan Restarick
2nd	Figures Of Light	Jasmine Morgan
3rd	Seventeen	Ava Pardue
Highly Commended	Willow Weep For You	William George Marshall