Monday 29 June 2015

The Yellow Book Poetry Prize Presentation

On the way to the Westminster Palace

 
On the 24th of June, I was invited to attend the prize presentation of The Yellow Book at Westminster Palace.

It was a great  event which highlights the importance of our mental health and well-being.

My two works, Paper Plane & Morning Run are prize-winning poems. I love supporting projects like this. Here are the reasons why:

  • Simple but Meaningful - The poems in The Yellow Book are simple but meaningful. I aim for my poems to be accessible not only to poetry readers/writers but also to everybody. What I've observed so far is that most contemporary poets write well-crafted but complicated poetry. When I say complicated, I mean most of them use difficult, non-day to day words. I call them "big words". Those that may read sophisticated to the eyes of poets but certainly will bore everyone else. For example, when I ask my partner or friends (who don't normally write/read poems) to look at modern poems, they corrugate their brows as they confess that they don't understand them. Now, how come? Shouldn't poetry be accessible to everybody - whether they be poets or not? I believe that simplicity is what will make poetry everlasting. If we are gonna make our readers look up a word at the dictionary at every stanza, how can we expect poetry to survive in the future? As a poet, I aim not to only impress my fellow poets but my fellow human beings as a whole.
    With two of the judges Helen Ivory (left) and Lydia Towsey (right)


  • Good Purpose - The Yellow Book will be distributed to GP Surgeries, hospitals, as well as prisons. The poems in it are meant to give hope. Poetry should serve a purpose and as a nurse and a student counsellor, I am just glad that my poems will be able to get the chance to inspire and give hope to others.
To get your free copy of the book, click HERE. You will need to pay for postage and packaging though.
On the balcony of Westminster Palace with The Yellow Book in which 2 of my poems have been published
 

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