Leeds Peace Poetry Competition

Leeds Peace Poetry was established in 2003 by an assortment of individuals and organisations and has been organising biannual competitions ever since. Current organisations which are represented include the University of Leeds (School of English and Poetry Centre), Leeds City Council Children’s Services, Leeds Library and Information Services – and Hyde Park Picture House. Judges over the years have been well-known or even famous, for example Malika Booker, Ian Duhig and Simon Armitage. For the 2025/26 competition, it’s Testament. Plenty of further details, along with poems written by previous winners and guidance on how to submit your poems, can be found on the pages at leedspeacepoetry.com.

The competition is unusual in the fact that it’s not oriented mainly towards adults. Young people are pointedly invited, which should be of interest to teachers. Poet John Whale, one of the organising group, comments on the website: "One of the most enjoyable aspects of the last few competitions has been the work not just of individuals, but of whole classes of children. The competition… gives us the chance to demonstrate how poetry matters – how it can give powerful expression to some of the key issues of our time."

One of those key issues is Extinction, the current theme, familiar to students of film history, who know that it is very well established. There is even a list of relevant films in this wide-ranging genre on the IMDb site, which covers everything from the Planet of the Apes series, through Dawn of the Dead to The Road - the one I would think of first, incidentally. Your poems need not be influenced by any of these, but it does not matter if they are. You might fix your attention on the extinction of a particular creature, like the Golden Toad featured on the cinema's screen advertisement, or on a language eradicated by colonisers, or rescued many years ago before it diminished, like Irish Gaelic. You might think about genocide, either in history like the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis, or more recently in Africa or Gaza. If you are a teacher, you might be able to coordinate your work for the competition with an already-existing curricular theme.

One more thing – you don’t have to live in Leeds. Many of the entries received in previous years have come from every part of the English-speaking world and from countries outside it as well. Translations into English are welcome. Just make sure they arrive before the end of January.

Find out more & enter your poetry here.

Richard Wilcocks, Secretary Leeds Peace Poetry.