Winners 2007 : First Prize

Summer School 2010

The 7th Tower Poetry Summer School (24-27 August) for young poets aged 18-23 will be held in Christ Church Oxford.

Poetry Matters

Poetry Matters is an exciting on-line poetry magazine which provides a fresh, dynamic perspective on poetry issues through a mix of news, reviews and comment.

Charlotte Runcie

St Albans High School for Girls

Flying Fish

They named a constellation after us,
pinned us on the night
like interesting butterflies.
As we lay inside the boat
gasping in the breathless air,
we stared up thirstily.

Tossed back, we wriggle close and surface
through horizons. A rainbow tension
of refracted shimmers changes with the light,
breaks around us, rippling down
and running off our wings. We let fly like oriental paper fans,
soaring keenly, like a sound, dive

in warm Atlantic.
Soon I’ll show you the Orinoco,
piranhas and pink dolphins
snapping as our lithe metallic bodies glint above,
me, admiring the spread of your pectoral fins
your ultraviolet bones –

when a distant woman picks mine from her teeth
you’ll be a faded curiosity,
framed in a Japanese museum,
our bleary maiden voyage printed in a marine
encyclopaedia
the pages side by side.

About Tower Poetry

Tower Poetry exists to encourage and challenge everyone who reads or writes poetry. Funded by a generous bequest to Christ Church, Oxford, by the late Christopher Tower, the aims of Tower Poetry are clear: to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people in education, and to challenge people to write their own poetry. Creative writing should be a central element in literary education, and learning about writing poetry can help students to think about ways of reading poetry.

Publications

Change Promises:
The Christopher Tower Poetry Prize Winners 2010 (Digital Edition)

The winning poems from the 2010 prize are brought together in this exclusive digital-only edition.