Liberal Arts undergraduate student wins poetry prize

The contest, which was organised by the Young Poets Network in The Poetry Society, awarded a prize to the best poem on the theme of Poetry as (Optimistic) Prophecy.

Issy's entry was submitted from her journal, where she writes poetry as a tool to shape her thoughts into something concrete, with intention, patterns and meaning.

I was very surprised to win this competition, the poem was written when I was very tired and submitted on an utter whim. I read the prompt for optimistic prophecy, and it linked in so well with my journal entry that I decided to submit it to the competition. I was not expecting to win, I just needed somewhere to put my thoughts that felt more significant than just on paper.

The poem was inspired by a fossilised shark uncovered in Mexico, the struggle to be optimistic, and the future of Quakerism, which Issy has been involved with since childhood.

Dr Alan Marshall, Reader in American Literature in the Department of English, was impressed by the depth of Issy's poem.

The poem begins with a detail that seems accidental and gratuitous, but which also suggests the mysterious depths of the earth, of the ocean - a shark! But the speaker is also interested in love, hope, and learning to "look after others." The poem seems to ask what the relationship might be between our impulse to look after others and how we respond to a creature like a shark (or a dinosaur), which on the surface doesn't need looking after. The connective tissue is responsive joy - the readiness to take pleasure in the world we find around us, expressed as a T-shirt ("I could make that"). The poem as a T-shirt.

Read the poem on the Young Poets Network website.

Image: A Ptychodus fossil specimen, which inspired Issy's poem. (Wikimedia Commons)