Kids Poetry Competition 2014 - Happy Families

I’m pleased to finally launch the poetry competition 2013 / 2014. Sorry for the delay; the heat wave left me a little frazzled and disorientated but I’ve cooled down and come up with a theme for this year’s competition which is…

poetry competition for kids - happy families

Family members!

Whether you love them, hate them, are indifferent until it comes to receiving Christmas and birthday presents from them, I want to hear about it. Got a kooky auntie who embarrasses you in public, a granddad who mourns the loss of ‘the good old days’ or just want to rant about your little brother’s inventive pranks? Put your frustration or admiration into verse because we’re keeping it in the family for this year’s competition!

Please Note The 2013/14 poetry competition is now closed, so you can't submit new entries, but you can enjoy reading the winning poems and the other entries or you can write a poem about a family member, just for fun.

Who can I write about?

The first and most important thing is that the person must be real (rather than somebody you have made up) and they must be a member of your family, however distant.

So you could write about your mum or dad, a brother or sister, aunts or uncles, grandparents or great-grandparents.

You couldn't write about a pet (they're not a human), a teacher (unless they happened also to be a relative) or yourself.

Judging and prizes

As with the 2012 competition, all the poems will be judged together rather than having classes for different age groups. However, the judges will take account of the author's age when assessing the poems and awarding the prizes.

All poems will be reviewed by an independent judge and the winners will be announced in mid February 2014. The winning poem will receive a prize of £50, with a second prize of £30 and a third prize of £20. The judges' decision will be final and no correspondence will be entered into with disgruntled non-winners.

Sending in your poems

If you'd like to enter the competition, please email Patrick at . We’ll aim to put all the entries up on our website so that they can be shared with all our readers. Please remember to include the following things:

The poem
Send your entry either as an attachment or in the main body of the email.
Your name, age and where you live
Please provide your full name (first and last names) and your age at the time of writing the poem. You don't need to give us your full address, just the town, city or country where you live will do. When we publish your poem on our website, we'll only put your first name, your age and where you live e.g. written by Ben, aged 9 from Birmingham, UK.
Why you wrote the poem
We'd love to hear what inspired you to write your poem and why you chose the relative you did. If you've used an unusual style of poetry, such as a shape poem, sonnet or limerick, we'd love you to tell us why you chose that particular style and whether the poem ended up as you planned.

Good luck and, most importantly, have fun writing your poems!

View the Entries

We've divided up the poems submitted to the Happy Families competition according to which family member or relative the poem is about: