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| 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.
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| On the balcony of Westminster Palace with The Yellow Book in which 2 of my poems have been published |
