2025 Young Poets Results

Congratulations to Benjamin Foxcroft for his winning entry, A Field Guide to Focus, in this year’s Young Poets Competition.

A Field Guide to Focus

my body’s a room with every light on.
a radio tuned to all stations at once.
i’m trying to sit still
but my thoughts spin chairs.

in year seven, i learned
how to pretend i was listening.
nod at the right time,
underline the date,
draw galaxies on the margins.

i feel my mother’s worry in my jaw,
my father’s restlessness in my knees.
some days i dance without music.
some days i forget to eat.

i once told a teacher:
i couldn’t remember what she just said.
she frowned like i’d confessed to sin.
i swallowed my “sorry”
and it rattled for hours.

sometimes, my breath forgets itself

sometimes, my limbs wander off mid-sentence.

i lose whole hours
and still feel late.

i do not know how to say
“i’m trying”
without hearing it as an excuse.
but i try.

today i lie deep down in the grass
and allow my thoughts to go wherever they please.
the sky doesn’t scold me
for being everywhere at once.

Our thanks go to the shortlist team and to Sanah Ahsan our 2025 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	A Field Guide to Focus	Benjamin Foxcroft
2nd	On reading that the world has 3 years left to cap global warming at 1.5°C	Dawn Sands
3rd	Girls’ Holiday, Nearly	Madeleine Oliver