Christ Church poetry competition to offer UK's most valuable prize

The annual Christopher Tower Poetry Competition is free to enter and open to students aged between 16 and 18 who are educated in the UK.

This year, the competition's 25th anniversary, participants are challenged to write a poem on the theme of 'Roots.'

The theme has been inspired by the 500th anniversary of the first founding of Christ Church in 1525.

Christ Church said the theme is "a point of departure as well as an organising principle for the wide variety of poems, in many different forms, that we are privileged to receive, and we look forward to seeing the many imaginative ways in which entrants interpret the challenge of this year’s theme".

The poet who writes the best single poem on the theme will receive £5,000, while second place will win £3,000, and third will receive £1,500.

There will also be 10 runners up, who will each receive £500, and the top three winners will also be offered a future place on the Tower Poetry Summer School.

The competition is judged anonymously by two guest judges and the Christopher Tower Student in Poetry in the English Language.

The Christopher Tower Student, Dr Anna Nickerson, will be joined as judge by Camille Ralphs and Lemn Sissay.

They bring extensive experience not only as poets but also with a variety of associated forms of writing and performance.

Lemn Sissay after being made an OBE (Image: PA) Christ Church's Professor Mishtooni Bose, Christopher Tower Student and Tutor in Medieval Poetry in English, said: "We are enormously grateful that poets of such calibre and expertise will be participating in the work of judging the competition this year."

Lemn Sissay is a poet, playwright, memoirist, and broadcaster, and his latest book, Let The Light Pour In, is a Sunday Times bestseller.

He has performed throughout the world, from The Library of Congress in the US to the Ethiopian National Theatre in Addis Ababa.

His television documentaries have been nominated for Grierson BAFTA and RTS awards, while his work in radio has been nominated for Sony Awards and the Palm D’Ors.

Camille Ralphs is a poet and critic, as well as an editor at the Times Literary Supplement, whose first collection of poems, After You Were, I Am, was published by Faber and Faber in March.

Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous magazines, including the New York Review of Books, The Poetry Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.