WINNERS 2026
Adult category
First
'Nomenclature' by Pratibha Kumari
We gave them names as if that were a boundary,
as if calling out "Bengal tiger" or "Baiji dolphin"
could hold them in the living world like coins in a jar.
My sister collected photographs--
creatures in reverse, each image a goodbye
she hadn't consented to.
She laminated them, alphabetized them,
as if order could be an argument against erasure.
The dodo: a name that became a sound,
a word that means already gone.
In Hindi, my grandmother spoke of naabuud--
erasure, obliteration,
a verb with no redemption in its grammar.
She said it was happening to the forests of her childhood,
the mountains she would never return to,
the language her own children did not speak.
I wonder if extinct animals dream of names.
If they haunt the spaces we named them from.
If somewhere, in the weight of our regret,
we are finally pronouncing them correctly--
Not as catalogues or classifications,
but as an incantation,
each syllable a candle lit
in the archaeology of the world we unmade.
My sister stopped taking photographs.
She could not bear to see
what she was already remembering
Second
'Dodo' by Ryan Caidic
In another tongue
it is nourishment
a word for breast
the infinite merciful udder,
that place in the mouth
before it learns of hunger.
Milk gathers there
without being asked
just a body that remembers
to give. Yet, when your mouth
reaches for the source
you find only a curve in the air.
As a boy, I built a treehouse
on the eaves of a bent caimito
where I spent days fishing
for another dream wrapped
in banana leaves, in the afternoon
they’d call me home for a warm snack
a comfort hung in the sky
when I ran back my feet
took root in the quiet dirt.
Meanwhile, the Scandinavian snow
from last week has vanished
scant traces of white aubade
lined the feet of maple, like a ghost
of a bird, inhabiting the shape
of mother, milk, land,
language you once drank, the home
you knew first, the names
that keep you alive.
Dodo-an extinct bird; a Filipino word for suckling milk.
Third
'Inventory' by Suraj Gupta
I catalogued the world before I knew
it was disappearing.
Age four: ladybugs in a mason jar,
counted seventeen, sketched their shells,
released them in the garden
(my mother said I had a scientist's heart).
Age twelve: started a list--
Passenger Pigeon, Thylacine, Caribbean Monk Seal--
wrote them in a notebook bound in red cloth,
as if paper could hold what extinction was taking.
Age twenty: understood the list
would never stop growing.
My grandmother died last winter.
She spoke a dialect
four people in the world still understood.
When she was gone, it went with her--
the specific way her village pronounced water,
the prayer she sang to calm fever,
the joke that only made sense
in that particular grammar of loss.
I tried to record her voice before the end.
The tape ran out mid-sentence.
Now I keep a new kind of ledger:
not creatures only,
but languages, songs, the private names
lovers give each other in darkness,
the recipes no one thought to write down,
the gardens buried under concrete,
the stars erased by light.
How does one honor
what has no monument?
I have filled seventeen notebooks now.
Each page a small resistance.
Each name a refusal.
Pratibha Kumari and Suraj Gupta are both are both from Garhani in Bihar, India. Ryan Caidic is a Filipino living in Denmark.
Secondary Category (schools)
First
'A Wilful Extinction' by Manasi Singhal
I have drained glittering rivers of gel-penned blood
and scrubbed away the gel-penned hieroglyphics scarring smooth skin.
I have swiped away the gnarly bark of trees cluttering
the corners of my heart, with the yellow leaves that hang
from them- sallow diary entries, tea-stained letters
to Father Christmas and sticky notes from which the glue has loosened.
I have twisted elastic fibres of arterial walls and sewn them together
into a tapestry that can cover the scrapping remnants of Disney-princess wallpaper
upon the cavernous ceilings of muscle and bone.
I have torn out scraggly wildflowers and marram grass and ploughed
blank squares of fallow fields in their place,
separated by a network of careful irrigation systems- narrow canals
forged from bloodless capillaries and tributaries of veins.
I have lined my nail-beds with roses.
velvet red petals to admire, to pull apart, to make flower chains with, to uproot and wrap in plastic
to give to somebody
whom you don’t like, with a smile that reminds them of it.
I have dumped old scraps of unwanted rubbish
down my own throat
eyes streaming through choking gasps, laboured through the sting
of oesophagus constricting round hard plastic and scouring metal.
I have burnt hot coals,
in a hearth forged where my stomach used to be- a newly refurbished, newly functioning factory-
skin turning black as layers of soot seep through porous cells.
I have mined through
thick layers of flesh, tearing
past toughened ligaments
scraping out the last glimmers from jewels I’ve already plundered.
I have let flames run ablaze,
burning bones which have not yet given away,
organs which have been too heavy to harvest.
The fire is too hot for the last few tears that have not yet been shed,
to put it out.
And now, the last few species-
the delicate beat of Pulse in my wrist,
the Smiles that wrap round aching cheeks,
the Electrical Impulses that thought and wondered and hurt
for me, have disappeared.
And with one last crack of my hammer,
I too have been rendered extinct.
Second
'Gypsies and people forced from homes by modernization' by Beatrice Wang
Brittle stones litter the ground like
the tiny missiles in my childhood-
laughter, rumpling the air- coins,
gold, silver, on the greys of
the rails/ lie beside them,
forgotten, dreams hidden,
beneath rails of posters and cameras,
of hard hats that stormed the air, iron, Tinkles of campfire music fluffing up
unmoving and hard, everywhere, the air, exploding in my ears,
around, bursts of fire and tinkling. constricting my throat with their
glass, homes, all burned to the. tendrils of smoke curling around as I
ground by new machinery, and. wait to say my goodbye, I am still
people now homeless, living in cars, silent, never found in my agony,
as if they are the only ones left in the. tears of dread, for a law that I will
world, no- as a symbol against. never bow under, fists of
these cruel people, like their first. cruel laughter and smoking pipes,
steps as a baby, - even smoke feels different,
like fireworks that traced the sky, around me, I see homes like ours,
sigils of hope that guarded us from tax, razed, into ruins of tears,
that hammered signs of cruelty to our. weeping mothers, curled
door. bodies around shells of caravans,
but they still hold their own,
they still tell stories of times before,
when they would dance all night
around fire -campfires-
that glowed as red as beacons,
guardians that protected against round
hats. -soldiers of war that stole us
away.
THIRD
'A Record of Absence' by Yunshu Yang
PART I.
They speak their ana til in whispers;
Prayers thought, not spoken.
Tongues weren’t cut but mouths clamped shut,
Children taught to stay hidden.
Silence isn’t empty
But learned.
As language becomes a breath
That doesn't leave the body.
PART II.
We wear our doppa when instructed
It just sits on top of our heads.
We still eat naan when apa calls for supper;
Food is our last safe tradition.
Muqam has lost that joyous beat,
The rhythms passed down incorrectly.
We still celebrate Eid
But something feels different
We know
And can’t seem to place it.
PART III.
Gone; vanished.
Just some unreadable traces remaining
Like pieces
From a distant story
Was it ever there if it’s been forgotten
Or have the narratives
All lost
Meaning.
Manasi Singhal and Beatrice Wang are both pupils at St Paul's Girls School, London. Yunshu Yang is at City of London School for Girls.
Commended adult poems are on a separate page of the website.
First
'Nomenclature' by Pratibha Kumari
We gave them names as if that were a boundary,
as if calling out "Bengal tiger" or "Baiji dolphin"
could hold them in the living world like coins in a jar.
My sister collected photographs--
creatures in reverse, each image a goodbye
she hadn't consented to.
She laminated them, alphabetized them,
as if order could be an argument against erasure.
The dodo: a name that became a sound,
a word that means already gone.
In Hindi, my grandmother spoke of naabuud--
erasure, obliteration,
a verb with no redemption in its grammar.
She said it was happening to the forests of her childhood,
the mountains she would never return to,
the language her own children did not speak.
I wonder if extinct animals dream of names.
If they haunt the spaces we named them from.
If somewhere, in the weight of our regret,
we are finally pronouncing them correctly--
Not as catalogues or classifications,
but as an incantation,
each syllable a candle lit
in the archaeology of the world we unmade.
My sister stopped taking photographs.
She could not bear to see
what she was already remembering
Second
'Dodo' by Ryan Caidic
In another tongue
it is nourishment
a word for breast
the infinite merciful udder,
that place in the mouth
before it learns of hunger.
Milk gathers there
without being asked
just a body that remembers
to give. Yet, when your mouth
reaches for the source
you find only a curve in the air.
As a boy, I built a treehouse
on the eaves of a bent caimito
where I spent days fishing
for another dream wrapped
in banana leaves, in the afternoon
they’d call me home for a warm snack
a comfort hung in the sky
when I ran back my feet
took root in the quiet dirt.
Meanwhile, the Scandinavian snow
from last week has vanished
scant traces of white aubade
lined the feet of maple, like a ghost
of a bird, inhabiting the shape
of mother, milk, land,
language you once drank, the home
you knew first, the names
that keep you alive.
Dodo-an extinct bird; a Filipino word for suckling milk.
Third
'Inventory' by Suraj Gupta
I catalogued the world before I knew
it was disappearing.
Age four: ladybugs in a mason jar,
counted seventeen, sketched their shells,
released them in the garden
(my mother said I had a scientist's heart).
Age twelve: started a list--
Passenger Pigeon, Thylacine, Caribbean Monk Seal--
wrote them in a notebook bound in red cloth,
as if paper could hold what extinction was taking.
Age twenty: understood the list
would never stop growing.
My grandmother died last winter.
She spoke a dialect
four people in the world still understood.
When she was gone, it went with her--
the specific way her village pronounced water,
the prayer she sang to calm fever,
the joke that only made sense
in that particular grammar of loss.
I tried to record her voice before the end.
The tape ran out mid-sentence.
Now I keep a new kind of ledger:
not creatures only,
but languages, songs, the private names
lovers give each other in darkness,
the recipes no one thought to write down,
the gardens buried under concrete,
the stars erased by light.
How does one honor
what has no monument?
I have filled seventeen notebooks now.
Each page a small resistance.
Each name a refusal.
Pratibha Kumari and Suraj Gupta are both are both from Garhani in Bihar, India. Ryan Caidic is a Filipino living in Denmark.
Secondary Category (schools)
First
'A Wilful Extinction' by Manasi Singhal
I have drained glittering rivers of gel-penned blood
and scrubbed away the gel-penned hieroglyphics scarring smooth skin.
I have swiped away the gnarly bark of trees cluttering
the corners of my heart, with the yellow leaves that hang
from them- sallow diary entries, tea-stained letters
to Father Christmas and sticky notes from which the glue has loosened.
I have twisted elastic fibres of arterial walls and sewn them together
into a tapestry that can cover the scrapping remnants of Disney-princess wallpaper
upon the cavernous ceilings of muscle and bone.
I have torn out scraggly wildflowers and marram grass and ploughed
blank squares of fallow fields in their place,
separated by a network of careful irrigation systems- narrow canals
forged from bloodless capillaries and tributaries of veins.
I have lined my nail-beds with roses.
velvet red petals to admire, to pull apart, to make flower chains with, to uproot and wrap in plastic
to give to somebody
whom you don’t like, with a smile that reminds them of it.
I have dumped old scraps of unwanted rubbish
down my own throat
eyes streaming through choking gasps, laboured through the sting
of oesophagus constricting round hard plastic and scouring metal.
I have burnt hot coals,
in a hearth forged where my stomach used to be- a newly refurbished, newly functioning factory-
skin turning black as layers of soot seep through porous cells.
I have mined through
thick layers of flesh, tearing
past toughened ligaments
scraping out the last glimmers from jewels I’ve already plundered.
I have let flames run ablaze,
burning bones which have not yet given away,
organs which have been too heavy to harvest.
The fire is too hot for the last few tears that have not yet been shed,
to put it out.
And now, the last few species-
the delicate beat of Pulse in my wrist,
the Smiles that wrap round aching cheeks,
the Electrical Impulses that thought and wondered and hurt
for me, have disappeared.
And with one last crack of my hammer,
I too have been rendered extinct.
Second
'Gypsies and people forced from homes by modernization' by Beatrice Wang
Brittle stones litter the ground like
the tiny missiles in my childhood-
laughter, rumpling the air- coins,
gold, silver, on the greys of
the rails/ lie beside them,
forgotten, dreams hidden,
beneath rails of posters and cameras,
of hard hats that stormed the air, iron, Tinkles of campfire music fluffing up
unmoving and hard, everywhere, the air, exploding in my ears,
around, bursts of fire and tinkling. constricting my throat with their
glass, homes, all burned to the. tendrils of smoke curling around as I
ground by new machinery, and. wait to say my goodbye, I am still
people now homeless, living in cars, silent, never found in my agony,
as if they are the only ones left in the. tears of dread, for a law that I will
world, no- as a symbol against. never bow under, fists of
these cruel people, like their first. cruel laughter and smoking pipes,
steps as a baby, - even smoke feels different,
like fireworks that traced the sky, around me, I see homes like ours,
sigils of hope that guarded us from tax, razed, into ruins of tears,
that hammered signs of cruelty to our. weeping mothers, curled
door. bodies around shells of caravans,
but they still hold their own,
they still tell stories of times before,
when they would dance all night
around fire -campfires-
that glowed as red as beacons,
guardians that protected against round
hats. -soldiers of war that stole us
away.
THIRD
'A Record of Absence' by Yunshu Yang
PART I.
They speak their ana til in whispers;
Prayers thought, not spoken.
Tongues weren’t cut but mouths clamped shut,
Children taught to stay hidden.
Silence isn’t empty
But learned.
As language becomes a breath
That doesn't leave the body.
PART II.
We wear our doppa when instructed
It just sits on top of our heads.
We still eat naan when apa calls for supper;
Food is our last safe tradition.
Muqam has lost that joyous beat,
The rhythms passed down incorrectly.
We still celebrate Eid
But something feels different
We know
And can’t seem to place it.
PART III.
Gone; vanished.
Just some unreadable traces remaining
Like pieces
From a distant story
Was it ever there if it’s been forgotten
Or have the narratives
All lost
Meaning.
Manasi Singhal and Beatrice Wang are both pupils at St Paul's Girls School, London. Yunshu Yang is at City of London School for Girls.
Commended adult poems are on a separate page of the website.
