As the boom in children’s poetry publishing continues, and children’s appetite for poetry grows and grows, CLPE, the National Poetry Centre for Primary Schools have announced the 2024 judges for the CLiPPA, together with plans for the year’s poetry celebrations. The CLiPPA, the CLPE Poetry Award, is the UK’s foremost award for published poetry for children.
Award-winning poet Liz Berry will chair the 2024 judging panel, joined by teacher and writer Darren Chetty, Billie Manning of the Poetry Society, Imogen Maund, teacher and UKLA representative, and Laura Mucha, who was shortlisted for the CLiPPA in 2022.
Established in 2003, the CLiPPA highlights the best new poetry for children. Past winners include Michael Rosen, John Agard, Jackie Kay, Roger McGough, Valerie Bloom and current Waterstones Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho. The unique CLiPPA Shadowing Scheme brings the poets and poetry on the shortlist into classrooms across the UK and encourages children to perform their favourite poems out loud. CLPE anticipate that over 40,000 children will participate in 2024.
As recently as 2015, judge Roger McGough lamented the lack of poetry books being published for children but this year, encouraged by the huge popularity of the CLiPPA as well as evidence of children’s enjoyment of poetry, as revealed by CLPE research, over 40 new poetry collections were submitted, including a number by publishers new to poetry.
CLPE’s much-praised CLiPPA Shadowing Scheme encourages schools and teachers to grow that love of poetry. Teachers are invited to choose one of the collections shortlisted for the CLiPPA and share with the children using dedicated teaching sequences produced by CLPE as well as videos of poets performing their work. Children choose a favourite poem from a shortlisted collection to work up into a performance, which is recorded and sent to a CLPE judging panel. Winning schools are invited to perform live at the award ceremony.
The 2024 CLiPPA Shadowing will open on 8th May, with a live announcement beamed into schools and featuring the shortlisted poets. The award ceremony will be held at the National Theatre on Friday 12th July.
For further information about the award and to register for the shadowing scheme, please visit www.clpe.org.uk/poetry/CLiPPA