3 . National Poetry Competition

Still looking for inspiration to create competition winning poems? Our 2020 Writing Guides are here to help!

Running alongside the 2020 National Poetry Competition, the Poetry Society has presented a series of writing guides by previous winners. You can select from a guide by Ella Frears on poems that explore the unknown, a guide by Pascale Petit, focusing on nature writing, a guide by Eric Berlin looking at poems where the speakers' viewpoints take sudden turns, and a guide by Matthew Caley on poems that use lightness to great effect.

First prize: Susannah Hart for "Reading the Child Protection Policy". Second prize: Ann Pelletier-Topping for "Granddaughter Moves In". Third prize: Natalie Linh Bolderston for "Middle Name with Diacritics".

Thanks for entering. If you have any questions, please email supDort@poetrysociety.org.uk.

4 . Before there was the written word, there was the language of dance. Dance expresses love and hate, joy and sorrow, life and death, and everything else in between.

    1    We dance from Florida to Alaska, from north to south and sea to sea. We dance at weddings, birthdays, office parties and just to fill the time.

“I adore dancing,” says Lester Bridges, the owner of a dance studio in Iowa. “I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.” Bridges runs dance classes for all ages. “Teaching dance is wonderful.     2    It’s great to watch them. For many of them, it’s a way of meeting people and having a social life.”

    3    “I can tell you about one young couple,” says Bridges. “They’re learning to do traditional dances. They arrive at the class in low spirits and they leave with a smile.     4    ”

So, do we dance in order to make ourselves feel better, calmer, healthier? Andrea Hillier says, “Dance, like the pattern of a beating heart, is life. Even after all these years, I want to get better and better.    5     I find it hard to stop! Dancing reminds me I’m alive.”