May 18, 2017

Budding young writers are encouraged to get their imaginations flowing for this year's Children's Poetry competition, a competition run as part of Cumbria School Games. 

The poem should concentrate on the six crucial values that underpin Cumbria School Games. These six values identify what school sport and competition should be about:

• Determination - Keep going no matter what. Determination is about the journey you go on to push yourself and achieve your dreams. Have the mental strength and self discipline to overcome obstacles, commit to your goals and keep working everyday to become the very best you can be. Don't hold back!

• Team work - Treating everyone equally, supporting each other and working together to have fun and achieve. Celebrate each other's success and be a positive team player.
• Self-belief - You've got to believe to achieve. Have the self-belief and confidence to succeed and reach your personal best.
• Honesty - Be honest with others and with yourself. Have the courage to do the right thing and what you know is right. Let the best person win, not the best cheat!
• Passion - Giving it 100 per cent. Put your heart and soul into the game and never give up. Passion makes you enter the race and passion makes you finish it.
• Respect - Show respect for the referee, for the opposition, for your team mates, for yourself and for the game. Accepting victory and defeat with grace, treating others politely and with understanding. Have respect every day, in every sport and for everyone.

The competition has three categories (KS1, KS2, KS3), each category has a winner, with the winning child receiving a £50 book token as a prize. An overall winner is also chosen and they will be invited to the opening ceremony of Cumbria School Games where Radio DJ, Mike Zellar from BBC Radio Cumbria will be the host. The winner will get to meet Mike and Sporting Champion Jenna Downing who is the Womens Inline Skating World Champion, 10 x British Champion and a X-Games silver medalist and if they so wish, they can join the ‘fun bus’ with Mr Stretch, Mr Armstrong and other sporting guests to visit the various events happening around Carlisle as part of Cumbria School Games.

The main prize for the overall winner is a workshop for their whole class kindly donated by leading Childrens author, Poet John Rice. John is a Cumbrian poet, from Sedburgh, who has published seven collections of poetry for children including ‘Bears Don’t Like Bananas’ and ‘Dreaming of Dinosaurs’, both illustrated by Charles Fuge. He edited ‘Scottish Poems’ for schools north of the border which sold equally as well south of the border! He is a regular Writer-in-Schools author having visited over 2,000 schools. His poems have been published in over 300 contemporary anthologies and feature in secondary school examination papers in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. 

Entry forms can be downloaded here>>