In partnership with Mearns Writers (who kindly donated £50 prize money), we are delighted to announce the winner and runners up of our inaugural young people’s poetry competition! These accomplished young poets, who took part in our poetry workshops at Mackie Academy, delighted our local celebrity judge, Alistair Lawrie, who said, “All of the submitted poems have features to commend them. It’s only with difficulty that I’ve come to a conclusion. There is a remarkable freshness and vigour to these poems, a willingness to experiment that is often underpinned by a confident verbal sureness of touch.”
So, our very worthy winner and the recipient of £50 is Olivia Wands for her poem, Newtown Connecticut.
Initially, we intended to have only one prize winner, however all of the young people’s poetry demonstrates such skill and talent that The Wee Gaitherin trustees felt this deserved to be acknowledged with the creation of two runners up prizes of £25, which go to Lachlan Lindsay for The Tranquil Garden, and Rory Thom for Prometheus.
To read all of the entries for this year's competition click here.
Here is a poemfilm of a selection of poems from the Young People who participated in Wee Gaitherin Workshops at Mackie Academy.
Poetry is alive and well in the hands of these potential makars of the future!
Many thanks to our facilitator, Jo Gilbert, who helped inspire the young people participating in the poetry workshops. She encouraged a number of them to audio record the work they produced, which will be shown as a film-poem at the awards ceremony at 7.30pm on Saturday 3rd August at the festival venue, Number 44 Hotel, Stonehaven.
Many thanks again to Mearns Writers, and to staff at Mackie Academy, our funders and all who generously contributed to our Crowd-funder appeal in support of these young people’s workshops.