Children's Poetry Competition 2009 - Sick Poets

It's time to put your thinking cap on, sharpen your pencil (or keyboard) and let your imagination run free, as you put your poetry skills to the test in our new children's poetry competition. There are two fantastic prizes - although writing poetry shouldn't be about just winning prizes - and lots of fun, and perhaps frustration, to be enjoyed along the way!

Please Note
This competition is now closed, so you can't submit new entries, but you can still read the entries or write a sick poem, just for fun.

Why Sick Poets?

I'm once again indebted to Hannah Lanyon, one of our young poetry stars, for providing the inspiration for our poetry competition. In the autumn, Hannah sent Timmy one of her new poems called My Finger has Pneumonia. It's a very funny and inventive poem about... well, all sorts of strange and nonsensical happenings:

My Finger Has Pneumonia
by Hannah Lanyon

My finger has pneumonia
I'm afraid he's very ill
I put him under hot and cold
And then he stayed quite still.

Until he started sneezing
His cheeks grew rosy-red
The doctor said for the next few weeks
He'll have to stay in bed.

So I'm afraid I can't do my homework
Or even come to school,
And it's nothing to do with the test tomorrow,
No connection at all.

I thought that the poem was quite brilliant and would provide a suitable theme - illness - for our next funny poetry competition. It takes a very special poetic talent to take such a gloomy subject and turn it into a funny poem...

Taking Part in The Competition

What you have to do to take part in the Sick Poets competition is really simple to understand and there are refreshingly few rules:

You must write a funny poem of 16 or fewer lines about being ill
The poem can be about really being ill, or pretending to be ill, or about any aspect of sickness, disease or death that takes your fancy. However you approach the subject, the resulting poem should be funny.
You must be aged 16 or under at the time you write the poem
Parents are sometimes tempted to write their own poems and submit them to children's poetry competitions, particularly when there are amazing prizes to be won. Try to discourage them, as its unfair and they're very unlikely to win.
The poem you submit must be your own, original creation
You can ask your parents or friends - perhaps even your teacher - for help and advice about writing your poem, but the idea for the poem and the poem itself must be your own work.
The last day for submission of competition entries is 31st October 2009
I know it seems ages away now, but a prize-winning funny poem may take five minutes, or five months, to write. If you're feeling inspired, you may submit up to a maximum of three poems during the course of the competition.

The Prizes

Two £50 prizes will be awarded, the first for the best poem written by a child aged 7 or under and the second for the best poem written by a child aged 8 or over. The competition will be judged by two independent judges and the results announced in mid-November 2009.

Sending in Your Poems

If you'd like to send in your poem, email it to and we'll get as many poems as we can up on the site to share with other readers. Please make sure you include your name, your age when you wrote the poem and the country where you live.

The Entries

You can view the competition entries by following the link below:

We're only recieved a handful of entries from younger poets - so if you're aged 7 or under, it's time to get writing and you're in with a good chance of winning the junior prize. The previous poetry competition was won by Daisy, then aged 6, who beat all comers!

Next Year's Poetry Competition

Some readers may be feeling disappointed as a shape poetry competition was originally promised for 2009. Having spent four months failing to finish a shape poem in time for Christmas 2008, I decided to give everyone a bit of extra thinking time. The shape poetry competition has therefore been put back until 2010. Your entry will be able to be either a true or a twisted shape poem on any subject you choose and you may either hand draw or computer generate your poem. If you start planning for the competition now, we should have a bumper crop of shape poems come 2010.