In May 2024 People Need Nature partnered with the Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network to run our sixth joint challenge, Soundworlds and Songscapes. Poet Polly Atkin set the challenge which you can read here

on setting and judging the challenge, Polly said:

Polly said:

I was delighted and heartened to see such a range of responses to the challenges, and to see how the poets approached innovating with form, sounds and language in playful ways, but often to address very serious subject matter. This combination of play and meaning, and the many ways it evolved into poems, was a real pleasure to behold. There were so many poems here to delight in – quiet poems, loud poems, poems which took a sidelong glance at our wild neighbours and those that looked them straight in the eye, or took their songs straight into their heart. Everyone who submitted should be really pleased with what they created.

First prize was for “Night-time Songs” by Mica Gillard from North Devon

1st: Nighttime songs – Mica Gillard, 23, North Devon

Second Prize went to Moira Piazzoli from Glasgow, for her poem Tongue-tide

Moira writes:

Third prize went to “Northeast Regional”, created by previous YPN/PNN challenge winner Maggie Wang

Kexin Huang’s poem “what we hear in a care home” was highly commended:

The following poems were commended. Click on the links to read these poems

The Blue Bird by Nisha Patel

Freefall by Chelsea Zhu

The Heart of Nostalgia by Divya Mehrish

Overhead overheard by Jennie Howitt

The Rookery by Freya Gillard

Thanks to everyone who submitted poems and to Mrs J R King for sponsoring this challenge.