This term the English Department ran the annual Alexis Whyte Poetry Competition. We had a large number of entries and the quality of poetry was fantastic.

Our judge was Freya Daly-Sadgrove. Freya specialises in poetry as performance, is a former head student of WGC, and won the Alexis Whyte Prize in 2010. She was impressed with all of the entries and encourages all entrants to continue writing. We thank her for her expertise, and for the fantastic feedback she has given our winners.

A big congratulations to Florence Kitteridge who is the 2019 recipient of the Alexis Whyte Memorial Prize for Original Poetry. Florence will be presented with the award at the Sports and Cultural Dinner.  Below is a list of all of our winners - congratulations to everyone.  You can read the winning entries here. 

Senior Section

1st place: ‘untitled’ by Florence Kitteridge.  Judge's comment: I really like the way that this poem is sort of an answer to itself.  Writing a poem that asks what the point of poetry is seems to open up ways to play with the form, and this poem dives right in: messing with tone, wrong-footing the reader, and demonstrating an obsessive, almost aggressive self-reflexiveness that is wry and unsettling.  And that’s what the point of poetry is! Poetry is the form that lets you take those risks and be playful.  Also I love when poets get a bit grumpy with poetry.  It’s a tricky and weird beast and we should take every opportunity to shake it up like this and see what falls out.
2nd place: ‘i stand on the edge of the roof of her house’ by Daisy van Wel.  Judge's comment: This is a mysterious and evocative poem. Who is the speaker? Who is the woman? Why is the speaker watching her? I like the way this poem isn’t interested in answering those questions for us; instead, we focus on the woman arranging flowers in a vase, lost in thought.  It’s a carefully wrought image of melancholy, and quite lovely in its understatedness.
3rd place: ‘we say it’s beautiful’ by Jiya Raj.   Judge's comment: This unsettling poem has an irresistible rhythm to it, with some satisfying, surprising sound play.  It draws you along through a strange, dark, dreamlike fantasy, which makes the abrupt awakening in the end very effective.

Junior Section

1st place: ‘The Path I Walk’ by Hana Kells.  Judge's comment: I really admire the way this poem so deftly captures a series of small moments – snatches of vivid detail that come and go in a dreamlike, fragmentary way, as if the poem is itself one of the nightmares mentioned in the final stanza. The structure is neat and satisfying; the regular stanzas with their repeated refrain – “war is” – become a kind of pulse, a relentless return to the thought of war, which is turned over and over and looked at from different angles and distances, and never made sense of.  The title is a powerful one – there is the literal path to walk, away from home, as well as a sense that you could keep walking forever and never escape the trauma of war.
2nd place: ‘The Cat’ by Petulia Cooper-Woodhouse.   Judge's comment:  I love the way each stanza in this poem reveals a little more, through repeated staccato lines and sound play, and the wonderfully ominous “silence" that creeps and slinks.  There’s a great sense of dramatic timing, with the tension building to a sudden, deadly release, and a bleakly dwindling conclusion.
3rd place: ‘Frustration’ by Amelia Fogg. Judge's comment:  This poem is so true!  Tight rhyme schemes like this often cause writers to use unnecessary words for the sake of the rhyme, but ‘Frustration’ is simple, sharp, and every line feels like it belongs.  Plus it made me laugh, which I love.