Grandmother and grandson scoop top prize in co-op poetry competition

A grandmother and grandson from Swansea have been announced the winners of Poetry Together, a cross-generational poetry competition run by the Manchester Children’s Book Festival and the Co-operative Group.

Poetry Together invited children and young people to pair up with a parent, grandparent, carer, older sibling or friend, to share their ideas and create brand new poetry. The competition aimed to connect generations creatively, while raising awareness of the work of the British Red Cross, the Co-operative Group’s current charity partner. The announcement of the winner comes in the same week that the Co-op Group and British Red Cross reached the £2m mark in their bid to raise £3.5m to tackle loneliness and social isolation in communities across the UK.

Carole Ann Smith and Joshua Huw Smith from Loughor impressed judges Gillian Clarke, Dame Carol Ann Duffy and Martin Kratz with their poem entitled ‘Ellis Evans of Trawsfynydd’.

“I had an idea during the 2015 Manchester Children’s Book Festival for a new poetry competition that would encourage adults and children to write together,” said Professor Dame Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate and creative director of the Manchester Children’s Book Festival.

“With the support of the Co-op charity partnership, Poetry Together has attracted hundreds of submissions from across the globe and my fellow judges and I have been thrilled by the quality and variety of poems submitted, and captivated learning about the collaborations that created them. It has also been an honour that this project has supported the British Red Cross campaign to encourage intergenerational conversations and combat loneliness in our communities.”

• The Manchester Children’s Book Festival runs from 24 June – 3 July 2016. For more information, visit www.mcbf.org.uk.