The Foyle prize for poetry will restore your faith in arts awards

Those of us who were never destined to be great young poets can probably remember the attempts. I kept my verses from when I was 14 in a pillowcase, which was mercifully put in the wash. Writing poetry is like learning an instrument. You need a disproportionate amount of know-how simply not to sound terrible. But when I spent National Poetry Day at the South Bank Centre for the Foyle Young Poets Awards, there were no bum notes. You could hear a universal page-turning from the audience at certain points, as they all followed the readers on stage in booklet form.

Here were a group of young poets who’d discovered the value of art and, what’s more, art for its own exploratory sake. Comedian Phill Jupitus, who was in attendance, said how great it was to see artists that were ‘young and style-free’, before they’d picked up the bad mannerisms or had time to start impersonating what they thought was the done thing.